[Beowulf] A look at the 100-core Tilera Gx

[Prentice Bisbal]

Eugen Leitl wrote:
> http://www.semiaccurate.com/2009/10/29/look-100-core-tilera-gx/
> 
> A look at the 100-core Tilera Gx
> 
> It's all about the network(s)
> 
> by Charlie Demerjian
> 
> October 29, 2009

> In previous generations, there was no floating-point (FP) hardware in Tilera
> products. The company strongly recommended against using FP code because it
> had to be emulated taking hundreds or thousands of cycles. With the new Gx
> series chips, FP code is still frowned upon, but there is some FP hardware to
> catch the odd instruction without a huge speed hit. The 100 core part can do
> 50 GigaFLOPS of FP which may sound like a large number, but that is only
> about 1/50th of what an ATI Cypress HD5870 chip can do.

I imagine this short-coming will limit the Tilera Gx's value to most of
HPC community. This doesn't even mention DP performance.

--
Prentice