AMD Proposes Hardware Methods to Boost Multi-Core Processors’ Performance

zippyjuan · 08-21-2007, 01:31 PM

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/dis...821041357.html

Quote:

.
AMD Announces Light-Weight Profiling Technology for Multi-Core Chips

Category: CPU

by Anton Shilov

[ 08/21/2007 | 04:15 AM ]

Advanced Micro Devices has announced a technology, which will allow future multi-core microprocessors to choose the best way of execution themselves, improving performance and making it easier to create software for multi-core microprocessors. The new tech may also eventually help the world’s second largest chipmaker to promote general purpose computing on graphics processors.

For years programming for multi-processor or multi-core machines has been a complex task, as software developers had to parallelize their code to take advantage of numerous processing engines. In the recent years this task has gained importance dramatically, as dual-core chips became widespread, however, efficient programming for such computers did not become much easier than before. But Advanced Micro Devices believes that it had found a way to solve this, as its newly-introduced Light-Weight Profiling (LWP) technology will allow chips to decide the most efficient way of execution themselves.

According to AMD, LWP is designed to enable code to make dynamic and real-time decisions about how best to improve the performance of concurrently running tasks, using techniques such as memory organization and code layout, with very little overhead. The LWP is a set of hardware features in future versions of microprocessors by AMD, thus, it is very likely that a part of the technology is a new set of instructions found in the forthcoming micro-architectures from AMD, such as Bulldozer.

“AMD understands the challenges developers face when creating multi-threaded software, and so we are taking a step to evolve new methods to ensure that software applications are optimized for multi-core technology,” said Earl Stahl, vice president, software engineering at AMD. “In the spirit of AMD’s commitment to open innovation and fostering industry discussion, we are making the Light-Weight Profiling specification available to encourage discussions with the developer community around how to make native and managed code perform better in multi-core computing environments.”

In fact, hardware parallelization is not something particularly new. Back in late 2005 NEC introduced a complier that was meant to be loaded onto a field programmable logic array (FPGA) and automatically parallelize software. The different between NEC’s technology and AMD’s proposal is that the latter promises real-time optimizations, whereas NEC’s technology was aimed at faster offline optimizations of programs.

Potentially, real-time increases in efficiency of execution may lead to a hardware arbiter, which will be able to decide on which computing engine to use. Given that AMD plans to introduce Fusion microprocessors that will feature both general-purpose (GP) central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU), the LWP technology may eventually be able to handle certain tasks to GPU, which is a highly-parallel computing engine itself. On the other hand, LWP ensures that software performance scales according to the amount of symmetric computing engines.

beatbox32 · 08-21-2007, 02:03 PM

This is good news...I can't wait for more software to take advantage of multi-core chips.

johnnymk · 08-21-2007, 02:08 PM

So if they patent this process, what does this mean for Intel?

08-21-2007, 02:03 PM	#2
beatbox32 Lieutenant Junior Grade Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: Orange County, CA, USA Posts: 159	This is good news...I can't wait for more software to take advantage of multi-core chips. __________________ -beatbox32 "Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns--or dollars. Take your choice--there is no other--and your time is running out." - Atlas Shrugged

Thread Tools	Search this Thread
Show Printable Version Email this Page	Search this Thread: Advanced Search
Display Modes
Linear Mode Switch to Hybrid Mode Switch to Threaded Mode

08-21-2007, 02:08 PM	#3
johnnymk Chief of Naval Operations Join Date: May 2000 Location: LEVITTOWN< PA> USA Posts: 13,621	So if they patent this process, what does this mean for Intel?

User Name
Password
Remember Me?