MIT researchers unveil new approach that could help enable chips with thousands of cores

[nfank]

http://scitechdaily.com/new-technique-could-enable-chips-with-thousands-of-cores/

 

Taken from reddit, submitted by by Portis403 to /r/Futurolog

 

 

 

Interesting read, talking about the challenges and advantages of using increased cores.

Its exciting to see how different and advanced computers may run, not so far down the line

[Dabombinable]

1. Please read the guidelines for posting in this section

2. Just what AMD needs, more encouragement.

[WhackingCheese]

AMD will win the core race confirmed.

[Doobeedoo]

Hm I've read something similar once, it's interesting, though it would take time specially on consumer level.
 

So are we going to see this first coming to smartphones -.- ?

[deviant88]

Sorry but this is bull, that only solves the cache problem but we dont have just a cache problem we have a paralelism problem in serial processors (CPU). Our gpu's alreay have thousands of paralel cores that do graphics render.

What we need is similar scaling in serial processors which quite hard to achieve, and to manage since it will be the job of the programmer to maintain the data paralel, gpu's work differently you give them the instruction of what and how to render and the gpu takes over, you dont have to specify how many threads and how many cores and how to sync data to get a final rendered image.

This research might enable slightly more cache efficient cpu's in near future tough, but freeing up more l2/l3 cache wont bring that much performance in 4-8 core desktop/phone/tablet cpu's.

Also with our current technology we cant have 1000 cpu cores, we would have to split current cores and make them incredibly small just like the GPU cores, which requires extremely good paralel data scaling else your 1000 cpu cores will be shit.

[Ohlyver]

What's the big deal? There are plenty of everyday software that are still single threaded..

[Bouzoo]

What's the big deal? There are plenty of everyday software that are still single threaded..

This is more beneficial for server hardware and such as well as for consumers that use heavily multi-threaded software (if they can even use that many cores), this won't be for your average joe in years and years to come (talking about few hundred cores CPU's, or even few dozen). Many people said what's the big deal when we got first quad-core CPU's, and look at us today.

[Deletive]

AMD will win the core race confirmed.

Intel already is winning and will probably keep winning. 

[Yog]

What's the big deal? There are plenty of everyday software that are still single threaded..

And? Does that mean we shouldn't progress because not EVERYONE has taken advantage of what's already out there? Just because half your friends don't like cookies doesn't mean the other half should never buy them.

[samcool55]

Aren't they called gpu's? If they aren't, wtf are gpu's then?

[Bsmith]

Read bit through source, they got a middle headline called "Time Travel" which is unrelated nor has correlation to the text below. that source goes my blacklist.

[HalGameGuru]

Read bit through source, they got a middle headline called "Time Travel" which is unrelated nor has correlation to the text below. that source goes my blacklist.

 

Did you finish the article? The researchers themselves coined that to refer to how the incremental timing is handled. Threads operating on old data can finish their work and pass it on or travel forward in time by reading from the cache that has advanced to a further count, you could have memory registers sitting at 1 for millions of cycles with a few advancing hundreds or thousands of iterations further than the oldest still on file. 

 

Multiple threads can be utilizing cached data from multiple points in time and continue working just fine so long as they and the other threads that may need their data keep track of their cache time count. 

 

The threads and processors are travelling back and forth in time, based on the data they are using and the age of it compared to what is currently in the cache.

[captain cactus]

Call me back in 2050 when the tech hits the market.

[Prysin]

1. Please read the guidelines for posting in this section

2. Just what AMD needs, more encouragement.

i thought this was already a thing... sort of called "GPU"...

 

and with HSA and Async Compute you can use the GPU as a CPU

[Dabombinable]

i thought this was already a thing... sort of called "GPU"...

 

and with HSA and Async Compute you can use the GPU as a CPU

I'm talking strictly about their CPU. They use "cores" as a selling point for CPU which aren't actually that good at all.

[slightlyjaded]

Actually it was a thing ever since the beowulf cluster was a thing.... Think that was about 96-97. The problem has never been the hardware. It's always been the code to get that many cores working on a peoce of data in an efficent manner.

[Dabombinable]

Actually it was a thing ever since the beowulf cluster was a thing.... Think that was about 96-97. The problem has never been the hardware. It's always been the code to get that many cores working on a peoce of data in an efficent manner.

Well unless its AMD's CMT architectures. Those CPU just plain suck in even multi threaded tasks compared to CPU with SMT and a lower amount of physical threads.

[slightlyjaded]

Well unless its AMD's CMT architectures. Those CPU just plain suck in even multi threaded tasks compared to CPU with SMT and a lower amount of physical threads.

Even then I feel it's an example of bad code. The cores can operate indepedantly. They just cant seem to work together on seperate pieces of a single task

[Dabombinable]

Even then I feel it's an example of bad code. The cores can operate indepedantly. They just cant seem to work together on seperate pieces of a single task

I was referring to when they do work independently in tasks that make use of the ALU.

[slightlyjaded]

I was referring to when they do work independently in tasks that make use of the ALU.

But they're also examples of multiple substandard cores trying to emulate a single core of a higher grade. If the instructions are broken up properly to run witin the constraints of the actual hardware it becomes a software issue. The problem with comparing 4*4 bit alu's to an actual 16 bit processor is the fact that it can't solve a 16 bit solution. It requires the problem to be broken up into 4 bit problems that add up to a 16 bit goal.

I feel that when used properly those systems worked. The code just wasn't designed to work properly with them.

Sorry typing on iphone keyboard

[Ohlyver]

And? Does that mean we shouldn't progress because not EVERYONE has taken advantage of what's already out there? Just because half your friends don't like cookies doesn't mean the other half should never buy them.

No, what I implied was that software developers should get their head out of their butt and work on multithreaded programming..