1,000 Core CPU Achieved: Your Future Desktop Will Be a Supercomputer

fseal · 24 Feb 2012

Well the idea is that your program the CPU to er.. BE the program, and nothing else. It's sort of like turning a program into a piece of hardware. So you program it for one small task, then all it can do from then on is that one task (Till you reprogram it). So they can't really be used for random general purpose tasks which is what most everything you do is.

Most computer peripherals and electronic devices are full of these processors (generally just a few) already. A video recorder would have one for mpeg compression, one for color conversion, etc... Then a general purpose processor for the UI (Buttons/viewfinder) They work well for commonly used fixed tasks.

Placing a massive general purpose OS on a set of them would be virtually unthinkable. You'd need maybe a million of them. And then you'd still need a general purpose CPU (or a few) to run your programs using them as the building blocks or another several dozen to several thousand per program you were runnning. And in practice, writing code for such architectures even when the outcome is well constrained has turned out to be quite difficult.

It's not that it's like impossible or that in the future with 50 million core ships that such things may not be the way things are done in the future, but it's not going to happen any time soon, but with a 1000 core chip /today/ there are practical uses for it, but not as a replacement for an intel (or amd) general purpose CPU, rather an adjunct for say rendering high res 3d images, cracking ciphers, protein folding etc, pretty much the same thing that GPUs are now already being used for. But having one say off the PCI bus and more local to the main CPU would be nice.

fseal · 24 Feb 2012

kbronski said:

Incredible technology, but considering the average laptop still only comes with a quad-core and desktops come with 6-cores as standard, doesn't it seem like this would be a little bit far-out in terms of hitting public consumer markets? I could always be drastically wrong, though.

The main question raised in my mind by this article, however, isn't a matter of processing capability, but rather one of data carrying. What type of cable would be needed to carry all the data that can be processed by this? What does this do to our already super-fast SSDs?

Oh, and then there's this: how does one cool this?

These are much much much less powerful cores than anything you find on the desktop today, there's just lots and lots more of them. It took 1000 cores to be only 20 times faster at the given task (a task selected to be perfectly suited to massive parallel processing for best apparent speed boost BTW)

But spewing out 5 gigaBYTEs per second of data would require an awfully fast raid of SSDs or some other higher performance storage system to keep up :)

seekermeister · 24 Feb 2012

Okay, I think that I'm better understanding you. You are speaking more in terms of what the situation is now, and I'm thinking in terms of what they might be. We are just thinking on different channels. That being said, I must also say that I can't see why it makes a difference where the cores are...on the CPU or the GPU. If you can have 500 strong cores on a GPU, you should be able to have the same cores on the CPU. If they were, it would seem as though there might be better performance, than having them offset elsewhere, because that would mean that the motherboard would have to properly support the function, and with my experience with them lately, they seem to always be the weak link, causing bottlenecks on even simple functions.

kbronski · 25 Feb 2012

fseal said:

These are much much much less powerful cores than anything you find on the desktop today, there's just lots and lots more of them. It took 1000 cores to be only 20 times faster at the given task (a task selected to be perfectly suited to massive parallel processing for best apparent speed boost BTW)

But spewing out 5 gigaBYTEs per second of data would require an awfully fast raid of SSDs or some other higher performance storage system to keep up :)

That makes much more sense than the idea of 1000 cores at the same power level as our standard cores today.

I'd be interested to see if something like that could actually keep up or not.
Either way, it's quite the technological achievement. :)

jimbo45 · 26 Feb 2012

Hi there

one of the problems of multi-cores is the law of diminishing returns.

The Overhead in managing all the cores to work together gets larger and larger as the number of cores increases so for example an 8 Core CPU won't actually be able to manage 8 times as many processes in the same time as a Single core one.

That said it's an interesting idea in power saving -- if your 1000 cores only needed miniscule amounts of power you could presumably achieve the same performance as an i7 processor with a load less power (and heat).

Analogy here

Say a building crumbles due to an Earthquake.

Very heavy lifting material could do the job of clearing the site but so could an army of several 1000 elephants / horses / even humans. All these are less "Powerful" than the heavy lifting material and the power requirements less.

(Actually moving stuff requires expenditure of energy so on a technical level the army of humans / animals will still need to produce so many KiloWatts of energy to move the rubble -- exactly the same amount as the lifting gear -- but the lifting gear is not 100% efficient so it's energy requirement will be greater than the amount needed for the job. The machine would in any case be over powered so a lot of the energy wasted in any case.

Humans -- at least the one's I know - if they have to lift something just use what energy is required -- no more and no less !!!

Computer cores are just shoving electrons around -- a totally different scenario although heat generation is the biggest bugbear these days to really large numbers of processors on tiny chips).

Cheers
jimbo

C32C3 · 26 Feb 2012

Solarstarshines said:

KazeNoKoe23 said:

Personally I doubt this. I think computing is moving more in the direction of portable devices i.e. tablets. They're obviously not viable desktop replacements for many people yet, but I would imagine that some time down the road, desktops in general may become obsolete.

I personally think Desktops are being more used by Gamers then general use

Most people in Todays times are Homebody there is more people sitting on there butt daily Tv movies no excersis what so ever and now even more people watch Tv then before

My point is people will continue Desktop use especially when they can watch movies chat and do multiple task a smart phone can only do so much and typing on a lil keypad is stressfull so i doubt people will just leap for a handheld device mostly it is the younger generation but when they slow down ole faithfull <Desktop > will be there ,Let's face it people want the latest even though they have to no use for it ,I sure the fad will die down like all fads

Your assessment of 'most people today' might be correct concerning those where you live but where I live it is not so. A lot of people here use desktops and they are not gamers. True, in many instances folks have them connected to their televisions as part of their entertainment center but they do not represent the majority.

The reason I do not own a portable pc is this: desktops you can 'tinker' with but what do you do with a laptop or notebook?

For example, the other day when I asked a colleague at work "how's it going" he looked a little sad. Then he told me that the laptop that he had purchased just two years ago had gone bust. He sets it on but gets nothing. He and his girlfriend are the proud parents of a little boy that is about 6 months old now and all of the pictures of him are on that laptop. I would really like to help him but I don't even know where to start. My only experience is with desktops. If something happens to one of mine I just take out a spare and then when there's time I go to work on it.

Laptops, notebooks, ultra books and smart phones are convenient, useful and sometimes necessary but so is the desktop; the existence of the one does not spell the end of the other.

As for "sitting on one's butt, not exercising and watching tv" that is again a broad generalization and would not apply to most people I know.

BarnabasSackett · 26 Feb 2012

Zepher said:

It's actually not your money till you get it.

It's your money as soon as they cut the check.

kbronski · 26 Feb 2012

jimbo45 said:

Hi there

one of the problems of multi-cores is the law of diminishing returns.

The Overhead in managing all the cores to work together gets larger and larger as the number of cores increases so for example an 8 Core CPU won't actually be able to manage 8 times as many processes in the same time as a Single core one.

That said it's an interesting idea in power saving -- if your 1000 cores only needed miniscule amounts of power you could presumably achieve the same performance as an i7 processor with a load less power (and heat).

.........................

So you're saying that by using more cores in a CPU, greater performance capabilities could be achieved in laptops without having to worry as much about blistering amounts of heat?

jimbo45 · 26 Feb 2012

kbronski said:

jimbo45 said:

Hi there

one of the problems of multi-cores is the law of diminishing returns.

The Overhead in managing all the cores to work together gets larger and larger as the number of cores increases so for example an 8 Core CPU won't actually be able to manage 8 times as many processes in the same time as a Single core one.

That said it's an interesting idea in power saving -- if your 1000 cores only needed miniscule amounts of power you could presumably achieve the same performance as an i7 processor with a load less power (and heat).

.........................

So you're saying that by using more cores in a CPU, greater performance capabilities could be achieved in laptops without having to worry as much about blistering amounts of heat?

Hi there
in theory yes since lower power consumption usually means less heat.

I'm not saying the Engineering is easy to do but the theory is sound -- look at my analogy above -- Elephants / Humans vs a Huge mechanical digger.

Just because the THEORY is OK doesn't mean that practical hardware will appear quickly - just look at Fusion research -- we KNOW the theory is sound but people have been trying for over 30 years without success to actually get a good working prototype. There are promising advances but even the most optimistic estimates say it could well be another 30 years or so before Fusion looks like a viable supplier of electricity.

Actually it's quite a sad indictment on education in W Europe and the USA -- More money is in practice spent on rubbish mobile phone ring tones than investment into Clean Fusion energy research -- so much for Politicians "Clean Energy" Lectures.

Cheers
jimbo

Palindari · 01 Mar 2012

This will be interesting if it comes to fruition.