4 ms·

Intel launches first 6-core x86 microprocessor

5 points by prakash 18y ago

mattmaroon 18y ago
Why? Still most of my 4 cores remain idle.
- albertcardona 18y ago
  I have mine pegged to max more than 30% of the time. Running simulations, stitching images, extracting 3D volumes.
  - mattmaroon 18y ago
    Neat. Simulations of what?
    - albertcardona 18y ago
      Viral populations in competition: http://www.ini.uzh.ch/~acardona/movies/0001_0250.mp4 http://www.ini.uzh.ch/~acardona/movies/0001_0250.mp4 Registering image tiles to make montages also takes forever, and it's very parallelizable: http://www.ini.uzh.ch/~acardona/movies/48.avi http://www.ini.uzh.ch/~acardona/movies/48.avi
ars 18y ago
If you're going to read this, read it here: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10041308-64.html http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10041308-64.html
albertcardona 18y ago
In a recent conference talk by John Shalf in Stockholm (see http://neuroinformatics2008.org/program-new/workshops/future-hardware-challenges/future-hardware-challenges-to-scientific-computing#john-shalf http://neuroinformatics2008.org/program-new/workshops/future... ), the monster was set on the table: chip companies are simplifying chips by reducing their clock speed (thus removing lots of now superfluous prebuffering and synchronization adjacent electronics) and tiling them to the hundreds and even thousands. We are not far away from the 10,000 core chip. Say 3 years? Very hard to guess. An important point of the talk: he explained how the chip industry ignored accademia as long as it could just increase clock speed to achieve better performance. But now, in the parallelization mess, they are comming back for ideas on how to make efficient use of the cores for compilers (which, according to John, are currently failing at exploiting multicores) and for software in general. [John calls this situation the "manycore", as opposed to the current "multicore"]
- anamax 18y ago
  They "ignored academia" because general purpose parallelism has been 5-10 years away since at least 1960. Moreover, a single fast processor has significant advantages over lots of slow processors. Amdahl's law still applies, as do some rather nasty (academic) results about the costs of communication. (Bisection bandwidth anyone?) FWIW, the "128 Z-80s on a bus" thing has been done.

5 points by prakash 18y ago

mattmaroon 18y ago

Why? Still most of my 4 cores remain idle.

albertcardona 18y ago
I have mine pegged to max more than 30% of the time. Running simulations, stitching images, extracting 3D volumes.
- mattmaroon 18y ago
  Neat. Simulations of what?
  - albertcardona 18y ago
    Viral populations in competition: http://www.ini.uzh.ch/~acardona/movies/0001_0250.mp4 http://www.ini.uzh.ch/~acardona/movies/0001_0250.mp4 Registering image tiles to make montages also takes forever, and it's very parallelizable: http://www.ini.uzh.ch/~acardona/movies/48.avi http://www.ini.uzh.ch/~acardona/movies/48.avi

ars 18y ago

If you're going to read this, read it here: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10041308-64.html http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10041308-64.html

albertcardona 18y ago

In a recent conference talk by John Shalf in Stockholm (see http://neuroinformatics2008.org/program-new/workshops/future-hardware-challenges/future-hardware-challenges-to-scientific-computing#john-shalf http://neuroinformatics2008.org/program-new/workshops/future... ), the monster was set on the table: chip companies are simplifying chips by reducing their clock speed (thus removing lots of now superfluous prebuffering and synchronization adjacent electronics) and tiling them to the hundreds and even thousands. We are not far away from the 10,000 core chip. Say 3 years? Very hard to guess. An important point of the talk: he explained how the chip industry ignored accademia as long as it could just increase clock speed to achieve better performance. But now, in the parallelization mess, they are comming back for ideas on how to make efficient use of the cores for compilers (which, according to John, are currently failing at exploiting multicores) and for software in general. [John calls this situation the "manycore", as opposed to the current "multicore"]

anamax 18y ago
They "ignored academia" because general purpose parallelism has been 5-10 years away since at least 1960. Moreover, a single fast processor has significant advantages over lots of slow processors. Amdahl's law still applies, as do some rather nasty (academic) results about the costs of communication. (Bisection bandwidth anyone?) FWIW, the "128 Z-80s on a bus" thing has been done.