Thread: Fall Processor CPUs

Among the major industrialized world forums held annually whales computer industry, on the fingers of one hand can be counted serious scientific and technical conferences, really introducing fresh information on the future of semiconductors. All major events, whatever they may be large and spectacular, usually calculated on the street, journalists and trade partners with which "stands behind the scenes" is the contract for the supply of new products. Major technological symposiums, as a rule, take place behind closed doors and are more professional than the general public. Meanwhile, carefully dismantled, even with the reduced information getting into the network, you can share with sufficient strategic ways to predict the likelihood of further development of an industry that is usually confirmed in the coming year announces the emergence of new products for sale.

Not exclusion from the list - one of the world's major conferences, Fall Processor Forum (FPF earlier - Microprocessor Forum), dedicated processors and architectures is carried out under the auspices of analyst firm In-Stat/MDR with the participation and active support and sponsorship of most producers, in one way or another related to the processors. It may be noted that since then, except that some Intel is not as significant as before, has been involved in the MPF. That was not a surprise - to popularize svih development has been quite a while Intel holds twice yearly, its own scientific technical forum for developers - IDF, which is mainly presented, and its processor innovations. However, Intel will still be present in this article - invisibly, by analogy with the 3 - a bunk bed "Lenin is always with us" old Soviet joke. For how not say, and even compare and contrast the options will architectures, not without it. The remaining players processor market, as a rule, if not Eryresau FPF to announce its new architectures, however, misses no opportunity to tell something that's really new.

When the spirit and sentiment of speakers at the FPF 04 in separate spots on the reports of various companies, I would like not only to tell about the most private of fresh cases of architectural solutions, but also to convey to the general industry trend.

Thus, in addition to traditional investments in the development of new architectures and perfecting old, many companies are now investing significant money in the "raspihivanie" multiple processor cores on a single crystal. Good or bad - only time will tell, because even the best make arbitration a few kernels and optimal software during the tasks, there is no guarantee that it will cost Pot Limit, and the real increase in productivity will simply occasion against the backdrop of, excuse me, obtuse increase the clock frequency. Currently, these issues any developer interested in processors, either, ARM, IA-64/EPIC, MIPS, Power, SPARC, x86 or something Untraditional.

However, it is time zakruglyatsya assumption and move on to the "cherries" current forum, good, interesting things was presented much. The most interesting presentations FPF 04, I believe, by the following:

AMD64 multi-architecture as a solution for the mass market (rapporteur Kevin McGrath (Kevin McGrath), a California office AMD to develop processor architectures)
The new generation of processor architecture Centaur / VIA (rapporteur Glenn Henry (Glenn Henry), president of Centaur Technology)

The second generation Efficeon processor technology and plans Transmeta (rapporteur Dittsel David (David R. Ditzel), co-founder and CTO company Transmeta)
The first DVD PowerPC processor from Freescale (rapporteur Toby Foster (Toby Foster) Division system architectures company Freescale Semiconductor)



AMD64 processor-2: 205 million transistors at 95 W
Give due AMD: What is not shown there would not commented on other architectures, the idea of Release 2 - nuclear Athlon 64/Opteron chips next year excite the public consciousness department Formula-1 race. In Koi eyelids company # 2 on the "desktop" Processors should not obediently in the wake of the leader, but even still manages to cut corners, not in some vlyapyvatsya tupichki Intel, and recently even in places still manages to dictate fashion. What is so interesting new 2 - nuclear AMD chip?

It will be recalled that the first time the idea of the release dvuyadernogo AMD processor experts have put forward five years ago. AMD presentation conducted Kevin McGrath will be pleased with the slides shown assembled Microprocessor Forum 1999, setting out the idea of integrated multiprocessors. True or not, but now argues that even at the stage of initial development of the architecture AMD K8 into account the possibility of optimizing design of mnogoyaderny with symmetric multiprocessor programming model (SMP, Symmetric Multiprocessing Programming). As the pluses of this architecture to optimize under 2 - and more nuclear design AMD representative stressed enough short conveyor K8 - with 12 stages for integer arithmetic, as well as integrated in the north bridge chip functionals that allegedly also simplifies the transition to mnogoyadernosti.

Increased productivity binucleated doc AMD processors to implement a new architecture - AMD Direct Connect Architecture, where the nucleus, roughly speaking, almost "directly" connected to the periphery and strapping system that reduces the number of bottlenecks and all sorts of delays. Processor kernel work in conjunction with a combined query interface system (SRI, system request interface), and switch podklyuchayuschim general module northern bridge, consisting, in turn, from three and two-tire HyperTransport 128 - bit DDR memory interface.

Whatever happened to there tsokolevkoy new processors for desktop PCs, AMD intends to release 2 - nuclear Opteron under the same connector Socket 940. It is no doubt to say that the first 2 - nuclear Opteron chips will support the first generation of DDR memory, this clarification heard from Kevin MakGrata during discussions in the corridor FPF.

Very interesting figures AMD representatives were shown during the presentation. Precise data or the results of tests it was not, the timetable and signed - 'expected performance. " As can be seen in the illustration on the Benchmark SPECfp / SPECint / SPEC JBB / SPECweb if in the same synthetic testing SPECfp_rate2000 (with a floating point arithmetic) system performance in two single-processors at 100% adopted, the system on two 2 - nuclear processors scoring N -5 productivity is more than 125%, while the same system with the top N-3 at about 140%. In integer arithmetic (SPECint_rate2000) rates even higher - over 140% and over 150%, respectively. Representatives AMD never rastolkovali its new rating system estimates the real clock frequency 2 - nuclear chips, but if we decide to adopt a single clock frequency of 2.4 GHz chip, dvuyadernogo N-3 for the 2.1 GHz, and the same N - 5 for the 1.9 GHz, in principle, such a hand is more or less comprehensible.

However, naively believing that everything will end mechanical "gluing" two nuclei Opteron. In fact, the new chips will have a number of new benefits, among which are already accurately described as follows:

Expanding the set of instructions to support SSE3. In 2 - nuclear Opteron chips will be implemented support 10 new instructions - horizontal add, horizontal sub, packet add, packet sub, move instructions, dup instructions (as opposed to the recruitment of Intel SSE3 no MONITOR / MWAIT)
Added one new x87 instruction - FIST (rounding)
Improved hardware module prefetcha: achieved additional optimization and minimized conflict between the victim and flow data prefetch. The combination of buffering up to four streams of data recording in the memory of WC -
Three of the state energy conservation regime - C1/C2/C3
Finally, a brief review of AMD speech at the forum FPF 04, one can not but mention the plans of the company. Here's what to improve K8 architecture have the AMD engineers in the near future:

1. More than one chip at the crystal
2. Integration into one of two or more chip memory controller that supports DDR2, DDR3, FB-DIMM and other new technologies memory probably already not in the current designs Opteron / Athlon 64 FX with their "smaller" for such purposes 940/939 - contact corps. However, according to representatives of AMD during the debate, it is possible that AMD server solutions to just skip DDR2 - even more so buferirovannuyu, and immediately move to the FB-DIMM. For "desktop" Athlon 64 chips without the support DDR2 / 3 oboydis not, and here is not a solution to the problem in sight.
3. Increased bus HyperTransport
4. Further scaling degree of integration in the crystal nuclei - up to four or more
5. Increasing the degree of control power consumption.