[Beowulf] New System Could Break Bottleneck in Microprocessors

[Chuck_Petras at selinc.com]

"Engineers at North Carolina State University and at Intel have come up 
with a solution to one of the modern microprocessor?s most persistent 
problems: communication between the processor?s many cores. Their answer 
is a dedicated set of logic circuits they call the Queue Management 
Device, or QMD. In simulations, integrating the QMD with the processor?s 
on-chip network, at a minimum, doubled core-to-core communication speed, 
and in some cases, boosted it much farther. Even better, as the number of 
cores was increased, the speed-up became more pronounced."

"The solution?born of a discussion with Intel engineers and executed by 
Solihin's student, Yipeng Wang, at NC State and at Intel?was to turn the 
software queue into hardware. This effectively turned three multistep 
software queue operations into three simple instructions?add data to the 
queue, take data from the queue, and put data near where it?s going to be 
needed next. Compared with just using the software solution, the QMD sped 
up a sample task such as packet processing?like network nodes do on the 
Internet?by a greater and greater amount the more cores were involved. For 
16 cores, QMD worked 20 times as fast as the software could."
http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/semiconductors/processors/new-circuits-break-bottleneck-in-microprocessors


Chuck Petras, PE**
Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories, Inc
Pullman, WA  99163  USA
http://www.selinc.com

SEL Synchrophasors - A New View of the Power System <
http://synchrophasor.selinc.com>

Making Electric Power Safer, More Reliable, and More Economical (R)

** Registered in Oregon.
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