Items tagged with multi-core
Many-core processors are apparently the new black for 2011. Intel continues to work on both its single chip cloud computer and Knights Corner, Tilera made headlines earlier this year, and now a new company, Adapteva, has announced its own entry into the field. Epiphany Block Diagram - Source: Adapteva The Epiphany architecture is an array of simple, RISC-based microprocessors. Each processor contains an ALU and FPU unit and 32K of SRAM; each processor node incorporates a router. Epiphany vs ARM and Vivante Architectures - Source: Adapteva The nodes communicate with each other via mesh networking; the implementation is capable of scaling up to a 64x64 array (4,096 processors). Adapteva claims...
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Did you think Intel would squander its final day at IDF sitting on its thumbs and letting the momentum from previous announcements close out the event? Pshaw! Rather than do that, Intel brought up a number of topics today, including plans to take computing to the extreme, multi-core's many uses, and an interesting new DRAM concept called Hybrid Memory Cube. Let's start with the multi-core talk. Lest anyone thing single-core is long for this world, Intel came out and said what we already know, which is "the practice of building more than one processing engine into a single chip has become the accepted method to increase performance." It's also not as simple as that. As Intel continues to bring...
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Quick, which would you rather have, higher clockspeeds or more CPU cores? The correct answer, of course, is a both, which is what separates enthusiasts who roll their own rigs from the civilians who buy their PCs at Best Buy with a Geek Squad set-up plan. But as power users, we're not so blinded by technology that we fail to realize software development has a long way to go to catch up with today's multi-core hardware. Partly for this reason, when AMD launched its 12-core AMD Opteron (you may know it as "Magny Cours") there was some internal uncertainty as to how it would be received. Not anymore. "In looking through sales data for the first half of 2010, 12-core processors clearly outsold their...
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Over the past four years, NVIDIA has made a great many claims regarding how porting various types of applications to run on GPUs instead of CPUs can tremendously improve performance by anywhere from 10x-500x. Intel, unsurprisingly, sees the situation differently, but has remained relatively quiet on the issue, possibly because Larrabee was going to be positioned as a discrete GPU. The recent announcement that Larrabee has been repurposed as an HPC/scientific computing solution may therefore be partially responsible for Intel ramping up an offensive against NVIDIA's claims regarding GPU computing. At the International Symposium On Computer Architecture (ISCA) this week, a team from Intel presented...
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Just when you thought your 6-core chip was the baddest processor on the planet, Intel goes and announces plans to ship PCs equipped with an experimental 48-core CPU to a handful of lucky researchers sometime by the end of the second quarter.That doesn't mean that you just wasted $1,100 and that your Core i7 980X is suddenly obsolete. As part of a research project, the 48-core part might never become commercially available, and if it did, it would be destined for mainframes and supercomputing tasks, not home desktops.At the same time, there is reason to envy. The underlying architecture of the 48-core part includes tweaks that reduce memory and communication bottlenecks inherent in all current...
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A key Microsoft kernel architect, David Probert, has come out with a surprising statement regarding Windows' ability to harness multiple cores. While Windows has taken advantage of multicore technology for over a decade, Probert notes that users rarely see the performance that they should. "Why should you ever, with all this parallel hardware, ever be waiting for your computer?" Probert asked in a presentation last week at the Universal Parallel Computing Research Center in Champaign-Urbana. Each successive OS release from Microsoft has improved multicore scaling but bottlenecks regularly occur as multiple applications jockey for position. Priority scheduling helps a certain amount, but it's...
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What could you do with 8 physical cores of CPU processing power? Probably not a whole lot on the desktop front (save for you Folding@Home fanatics), but in the server sector, Intel's upcoming 8-core Nehalem-EX chip is pretty big news, and it's launching later this month, according to Intel Xeon Platform Director, Shannon Poulin.The announcement puts to rest any worries that the 8-core part might be delayed, and makes good on a promise Intel made last year when the chip maker said it would release the chip in the first half of 2010.To quickly recap, Nehalem-EX boasts an extensive feature-set, including:Intel Nehalem Architecture buil on Intel's unique 45nm high-k metal gate technology processUp...
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According to reports, AMD will move away from mega-GPU chips with their next release, codenamed R700.Modern graphics processors rely on extensive amounts of parallelism to get calculations done as quickly as possible, but those GPUs are still monolithic chips designed with a given number of stream processors, texture units, render back-ends, and the like, each depending on their performance grade. However, the folks at Fudzilla say they have it on good authority that AMD will challenge that paradigm with its next-generation graphics processor, code-named R700. According to Fudzilla, low-end, mid-range, and high-end R700 cards will all have GPUs with varying numbers of identical R700 cores. To...
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Intel's Multi-Core Entertainment and Innovation at the Core of CES WHEN: Jan. 8-11, 2007 WHERE: Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC), Intel booth at Central Hall #7153; plus other venues WHAT: Major themes will surface at the 2007 International Consumer Electronics Show including: the emergence of Internet-delivered entertainment as the PC grows even cozier with the TV; the "renaissance" of the PC with new Intel dual and quad core processors and exciting new operating systems; and the ongoing growth of PC gaming. Throughout the event, Intel will highlight its in-home and on-the-go product lines and entertainment- and gaming-related partnerships that build upon the introduction of...
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Intel Teams With Top Universities for Software-Related Research, Curriculum for Future Multi-Core Processors 45 Universities Worldwide Will Offer Multi-Threading Courses to Equip Students to Take Advantage of Multi-Core Platforms SANTA CLARA, Calif., Aug. 7, 2006 - Intel Corporation today announced a global effort to prepare university students for a new paradigm of software development as Intel transitions its processors from single-processor engines to ones that will have multiple cores and threads. This evolution will transform software design and require entirely new thinking and innovation in order to leverage this kind of processing power. As part of its higher education program,...
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AMD Announces World's First 64-Bit, x86 Multi-Core Processors For Servers And Workstations At Second-Anniversary Celebration Of AMD Opteron Processor —AMD launches Dual-Core AMD Opteron processors for server and workstations and unveils AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core processor for consumers and business users — NEW YORK -- April 21, 2005 --Charting another industry first, AMD (NYSE: AMD) today introduced a broad portfolio of dual-core solutions from server and workstations for enterprise users to desktop and desktop-replacement notebooks for consumers and business users. At the second-anniversary celebration of the award-winning AMD Opteron processor, the company announced immediate...
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