3 ms·

Be nice if they could shift some of the CPU core towards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asynchronous_circuit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asynchronous_circuit d

by Zenst 6y ago

Be nice if they could shift some of the CPU core towards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asynchronous_circuit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asynchronous_circuit design and that way be able to run those parts at a variable clock rate instead of one part for this frequency and another for a slightly lesser frequency. For power efficiency for dynamic loads, an asynchronous circuit design would win over current solutions. However designing asynchronous circuits is a magnitude more complex than a synchronous one. But for parts like AVX, extensions that will only be available upon the main core, that would yield dividends and with that. However, may find they offer such extensions as a separate chiplet/stack and negate the issue of does this core support it as they all could tap into that. What i'd find interesting would be the actual design and instruction set under the hood, the x86 gets translated via microcode and do wonder how much of the underlying way things work has diverged from that original instruction set.

monocasa 6y ago
Async design is basically snake oil AFAIK that's only produced cores in the 10Ks of gates. And there's still benefits to lower speed sections as there's physical differences to the transistors to emphasize power consumption of switching speed that'd still continue into async designs. On top of that, part of what we're seeing is dark silicon and the specifics of Dennard scaling. You can't light up the whole chip and not melt the chip, so you're going to see mobile TDP chips where you turn half the chip on or off at a time either way.
- Zenst 6y ago
  Thank you for that, had somewhat overlooked the aspect of parts not used would in effect be shifting heatsinks and the whole big/little does in many ways give you whole easily controlled area's which for multi core designs can work well. But biggest issue with any adoption of growth in asyn design is the tools and skills to do such work. Though it does prove hard to compare and most of the development in the async area been driven by the EM advantages for space based usage.

by Zenst 6y ago

monocasa 6y ago

Async design is basically snake oil AFAIK that's only produced cores in the 10Ks of gates. And there's still benefits to lower speed sections as there's physical differences to the transistors to emphasize power consumption of switching speed that'd still continue into async designs. On top of that, part of what we're seeing is dark silicon and the specifics of Dennard scaling. You can't light up the whole chip and not melt the chip, so you're going to see mobile TDP chips where you turn half the chip on or off at a time either way.

Zenst 6y ago
Thank you for that, had somewhat overlooked the aspect of parts not used would in effect be shifting heatsinks and the whole big/little does in many ways give you whole easily controlled area's which for multi core designs can work well. But biggest issue with any adoption of growth in asyn design is the tools and skills to do such work. Though it does prove hard to compare and most of the development in the async area been driven by the EM advantages for space based usage.