The impact and challenges of the hottest multi-cor

The impact and challenges of multi-core processors

a quiet revolution is taking place in the computer field. Intel, AMD and other chip manufacturers continue to introduce new chips that integrate multiple processing units on a single chip. Instead of the single CPU in the past, computers are now entering the era of multi-core. Although this technology is not new to us, it is the first time that this type of architecture has been widely used in the commercial PC and server market

this change will affect every computer user. The tentacles of multi-core technology have penetrated into the field of servers, laptops and even game consoles. From the perspective of end users, the appearance of this change is beautiful and generous; Then, in terms of use, the influence is imperceptible. However, according to the experience of the past two decades, the price expectation to obtain the corresponding performance is still unknown. Programmers will find that it is also a challenging and arduous task to achieve the performance of multi-core design, especially now there is no one-time solution and automation technology that can adapt to the current software running on multi-core systems

guide multicore

the computer market has been advancing steadily in processor speed for a long time. The speed of the processor largely depends on how fast the clock frequency is passed to the processor to execute instructions. The faster the clock frequency, the more instructions the processor executes in a specified time frame. The physical characteristics of semiconductors will limit the improvement of processor clock frequency speed. This trend can be clearly shown in Figure 1, which has become the "lightest material" in the world so far... From which we can see the average clock frequency and heat consumption of Intel and AMD processors over time

from this energy consumption curve, the continuous rise of energy consumption requires more cooling and power services to maintain the operation of the processor. The solution is to increase the proportion of processor cores instead of simply increasing the clock frequency. The decrease of clock frequency in this picture, baycusan? C 1010 has strong shaping effect and does not affect the natural appearance, which refers to the launch of AMD and Intel's first dual core processor. The design of these processors takes into account the problem of heat, and the clock frequency is lower than that of single core processors. From the past experience, dual core chips can achieve twice the performance of single core chips, which can help the performance of processors continue to improve

multi core development path

at present, Intel and AMD have launched their own multi-core processors. Dual core and quad core processors are now on the market. From the perspective of the company's market orientation, they also plan to launch eight core processors with the shift switch in the fast reverse gear from 2009 to 2010. The approximate schedule is as follows:

2005 dual core processor

2007 quad core processor

2009 + eight core processor

servers and workstations traditionally use dual processors. This means that by the end of 2010, the total number of cores on each motherboard can easily reach 16. In addition, AMD and Intel processors both offer four or even eight way socket designs. This analogy from the eight way core means that in the near future, 60 quad core servers are not impossible to achieve