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RE: More multi-core



The European Commission had a call for tools, methods etc aimed at multicore recently, so there will be a raft of new projects in this area starting soon.
 
There is also a bit on EDN
 
Part 1 = http://www.edn.com/article/CA6454564.html
 
Part 2 = http://www.edn.com/article/CA6456728.html?nid=2019&rid=1400854740
 
There is also The Multicore Association http://www.multicore-association.org/ trying to develop standards. The member list is rather interesting - spot the odd organisation out.

Tony Gore

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From: Mailing_List_Robot [mailto:sympa@xxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Barry Cook
Sent: 05 July 2007 09:57
To: Ian East
Cc: Occam Family
Subject: Re: More multi-core

Ian,
 
Why wait - do it yourself, we just did!
 
In order to provide an option customers asked for we implemented a small processor and then dropped 16 of them onto an FPGA - actually on the side of an FPGA already pretty full with our main product. Peak performance of each processor is ~750MOPS so the total is about the same as claimed by a top-of-the-line Pentium (but at far lower power - the whole box with its display and fast interfaces consumes ~25W). Admittedly the application is naturally fairly parallel and interaction between processors is limited (the processors work in pairs).
 
Anyone wanting to do some research should not find it too difficult to implement interesting multi-core on reasonably priced FPGA's.
 
       Barry.
 
Dr Barry M. Cook, BSc, PhD, CEng, MBCS, CITP, MIEEE
CTO,
4Links Limited,
Bletchley Park,
MK3 6ZP,
UK.
----- Original Message -----
From: Ian East
Sent: Wednesday, July 04, 2007 5:14 PM
Subject: Re: More multi-core

Looks like I better dust off the old Parallel Programming text what I rote back in the last century!

At Brookes/Computing we now teach no concurrent programming at all.  If it resumes, it'll probably be monitors using Java – which only 1 in 20 or so will master to any useful degree.  But I'll still be expected to return 70% pass-rate, of course.

It will start to get interesting once the hardware, on a general-purpose machine, passes 8 or so cores.  Any guesses as to performance-scaling achieved in practice?  Could be lucrative this time around.

Ian

On 4 Jul 2007, at 09:35, Barry Cook wrote:

News of another manufacturer entering the multi-core arena - with yet another architecture.
 
Interestingly, the power consumption argument is getting more prominent [Two cores consume less power than one core at twice the speed]. We heard it at WoTUG in Eindhoven (from Philips) and it is spreading.
 
 
    Barry.