On 22-May-07, at 8:26 PM, Matthew Fulmer wrote:
Jecel is the local expert in processors. You should check out his site: http://www.merlintec.com:8080/hardware
I still think a very simple RISC architecture with a substantial above-the-bus chunk of memory that can be used for 'microcode' or data store, no traditional (and expensive) cache, transputer-like communication channels to other cores and probably no special floating point hardware would be nice. If you can get to a state where dozens/hundreds of cores can be sensibly used then one or two can spend their time as floating point units and if needed many more can join in. Likewise for video stream processing.
The really hard part is getting people to actually think about multi- processing solutions to problems. The software world is far too comfortable with single-thread thinking and the cosy fantasy version of Moore's Law.
tim -- tim Rowledge; tim@rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim Strange Opcodes: ZZZZZZZZZZZZ: enter sleep mode