The BBC has published an article on a new 80 core processor that Intel has just prototyped.
The article points out that application developers are in no way prepared to write applications that take advantage of multi-core processors.
The challenge is to find a way to program the many cores simultaneously.
Current desktop machines have up to four separate cores, while the Cell processor inside the PlayStation 3 has eight (seven of them useable). Each core is effectively a programmable chip in its own right.
But to take advantage of the extra processing power, programmers need to gives instructions to each core that work in parallel with one another.
There are already specialist chips with multiple cores - such as those used in router hardware and graphics cards - but Dr Mark Bull, at the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre, said multi-core chips were forcing a sea-change in the programming of desktop applications.
"It's not too difficult to find two or four independent things you can do concurrently, finding 80 or more things is more difficult, especially for desktop applications.
"It is going to require quite a revolution in software programming.
"Massive parallelism has been the preserve of the minority - a few people doing high-performance scientific computing.
What is interesting about this is that not only are most application developers not prepared for concurrent programming, they are not really aware of the issue and there is almost no discussion in industry forums on the subject.
PJ Murray
CodeFutures Software
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home