[squeak-dev] Prepare for Thousands of Cores --- oh my Chip - it's full of cores!

Peter William Lount peter at smalltalk.org
Sat Jul 5 18:01:24 UTC 2008


Philippe Marschall wrote:
> 2008/7/5, Peter William Lount <peter at smalltalk.org>:
>   
>> Hi,
>>
>>  Intel among others such as Tilera and NVidia are telling us - yes us
>> smalltalkers - to prepare for tens, hundreds and thousands of cores on a
>> single chip. It's up to us to bring this power to our end users - and
>> ourselves too!
>>     
>
> The same Intel that has told us that the future will be IA64 / EPIC?
> The same Intel that has promised us 20 Gigahurtz today? The same Intel
> that tried to sell us RAMBUST? The same Intel that builds SSE into
> it's processors to make the Internet faster?
>
> Cheers
> Philippe
>
>
>   

Hi,

Yeah, the Itanium. An awesome chip architecture with an incredible 
instruction set. Gotta love it and it's doomed marketing.

Yes, that Intel who showed an 80 core research chip last year.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teraflops_Research_Chip
http://www.theinquirer.net/en/inquirer/news/2007/06/21/intel-shows-off-2-tflops-processor
http://techresearch.intel.com/articles/Tera-Scale/1449.htm

Yes, that Intel that is bringing out this little wonder.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080205-small-wonder-inside-intels-silverthorne-ultramobile-cpu.html

Intel isn't the only vendor up to the N-Core game. In fact they are 
getting beaten down hard by all the other contenders for the thrown. Hard.

Yes, Multi-core from the companies listed here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-core_(computing)

Yes, that Tilera. They have 20 and *Tile-64 *core chips now, with 128 
cores in the works. They have indicated that they plan up to 4096 with 
their technology.
http://www.Tilera.com

Yes, that NVidia who is already delivering tons of boards with massive 
numbers of GPGPUs. I have a couple of these boards already.
http://www.NVidia.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_200_Series
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia_*Tesla*
http://www.engadget.com/2008/07/03/nvidia-said-to-be-dropping-geforce-gtx-280-price-in-response-to/

Yes, AMD and Intel who announced 8 core mainstream chips for next year.

Yes, AMD (ATI) who announced this awesome speed beastie: 4870 X2 
(RV770XT) cards. *800+ stream processing units!*
http://www.engadget.com/2008/07/03/amd-radeon-hd-4870-x2-images-leaked-rumored-for-august-release/
http://ati.amd.com/products/Radeonhd4800/specs.html

Yes, IBM who makes the *9 core cell processor* chip.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_(microprocessor)

Yes, Apple who just bought P.A. Semi.
http://gizmodo.com/382929/apple-buys-itself-a-little-chip-company-known-for-super-efficient-processors


*These are not your or your fathers Transputer, most of these are real 
N-core processors available now.
*
Looking at the cpu power available to us and comparing it with the 
software that is available one can't but be either sad or highly 
motivated to make use of the powerful chips to make much better 
software. Heck we're still programming with words! What ever happened to 
visual programming? We still have macosx and windows and ick linux and 
unix as the best of the breed systems? Ick. Sure I use them all but come 
on... we can and must do better...

Cheers,

Peter
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