[RANDOM THOUGHTS] External CPU???

[spacehunter0413]

Greetings,

 

So recently I am upgrading my laptop. As yall know, it's very unlikely for a laptop to have upgradable gpu and cpu since they are soldered on the motherboard directly. But we have some solutions such as using an external GPU. But I've never heard of external CPU. Is it possible to have such thing? I'd say it has some potential, for example, plug&play, external cooling. If I am using a laptop with minimal functions going to lectures and such, when I am home, I want to do some editing, or play games, I just plug this thing in.

 

I've heard of some neural compute accelerater produced by intel, sounds like what I am looking for, but they are not exactly CPU, but TPU

https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/processor-development-tools/1811851/?cm_mmc=UK-PLA-DS3A-_-google-_-PLA_UK_EN_Raspberry_Pi_%26_Arduino_%26_Development_Tools_Whoop-_-Processor+Development+Tools_Whoop-_-1811851&matchtype=&pla-334780502532&gclid=CjwKCAjwmqKJBhAWEiwAMvGt6LLrtxm58DGTgNWMnCs_r14LirVIWJOq6mLnURdHIY8vFDrJjEC49hoCIjwQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

 

Any ideas? Is it possible? Or is there some architecture wise hurdle forbids such device? Or it's just not as cost effective as buying a desktop at home.

 

Thanks

[BetteBalterZen]

I think performance would be pretty bad because of too slow connections and high latency. But could it be done? Yeah sure, why not. 

[Anghammarad]

Those sticks are only for specifc applications. Like ASIC Miners... only one or few trick ponies, not really accelerating your work or games. 

 

OK if your work consists of that one trick pony and there is specific software compiled to use those devices... jep...

[Vishera]

2 minutes ago, spacehunter0413 said:

But I've never heard of external CPU. Is it possible to have such thing?

It won't happen,Since the CPU is the main processing unit of your PC.

Most of the PCI-E lanes,and the memory controller are all in the CPU.

 

You will basically need an external motherboard for it to work.

[Levent]

Nope not gonna happen.Adding to all of the above, its not just sockets that change between models. 

[YoungBlade]

In theory, you could have a second CPU attached to a system. Dual CPUs are a thing for workstations and servers.

 

In practice, this wouldn't work, or at minimum wouldn't work well. The fastest connector common on laptops is Thunderbolt, which can use PCIe. While PCIe is fast, it's slow compared to the link between CPU and RAM. The external CPU would be memory bandwidth starved.

 

Now, you could piggyback off the Direct Storage tech to at least give this external CPU direct access to the RAM without going through the other CPU, but the latency is still going to be terrible compared to the CPU on the motherboard. RAM is put as close to the CPU as possible to reduce latency, but now that information has to travel not just across the whole motherboard, but through a cable.

 

And finally, the CPU PCIe lanes are important. If you are limited by Thunderbolt, you won't be able to utilize all 20+ lanes of the external CPU, which means that everything using a decent amount of PCIe lanes, like the graphics card, is going to have to go through the internal CPU anyway.