Details are our about Intel's Larrabee multi-core x86 processor.
I haven't had a chance to look into it myself yet, but it definitely
is looking like the multi-core future is right around the corner.

http://levelofdetail.wordpress.com/2008/08/04/larrabee-paper-and-articles/ http://www.gpgpu.org/cgi-bin/blosxom.cgi/2008/08/04#larrabeeSIGGRAPH08

Here's the abstract from the paper they'll present at SIGGRAPH next week:

This paper presents a many-core visual computing architecture code named Larrabee, a new software rendering pipeline, a manycore programming model, and performance analysis for several applications. Larrabee uses multiple in-order x86 CPU cores that are augmented by a wide vector processor unit, as well as some fixed function logic blocks. This provides dramatically higher performance per watt and per unit of area than out-of-order CPUs on highly parallel workloads. It also greatly increases the flexibility and programmability of the architecture as compared to standard GPUs. A coherent on-die 2nd level cache allows efficient inter-processor communication and high-bandwidth local data access by CPU cores. Task scheduling is performed entirely with software in Larrabee, rather than in fixed function logic. The customizable software graphics rendering pipeline for this architecture uses binning in order to reduce required memory bandwidth, minimize lock contention, and increase opportunities for parallelism relative to standard GPUs. The Larrabee native programming model supports a variety of highly parallel applications that use irregular data structures. Performance analysis on those applications demonstrates Larrabee's potential for a broad range of parallel computation.

Looks like you have to have have access to the ACM digital library for
now to get your hands on the paper.
For those who do, here's the link:
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1360612.1360617



--bb

Bill Baxter wrote:
> Details are our about Intel's Larrabee multi-core x86 processor.
> I haven't had a chance to look into it myself yet, but it definitely
> is looking like the multi-core future is right around the corner.
> 
> http://levelofdetail.wordpress.com/2008/08/04/larrabee-paper-and-articles/
> http://www.gpgpu.org/cgi-bin/blosxom.cgi/2008/08/04#larrabeeSIGGRAPH08
> 
> Here's the abstract from the paper they'll present at SIGGRAPH next week:
> 
> This paper presents a many-core visual computing architecture
> code named Larrabee, a new software rendering pipeline, a manycore
> programming model, and performance analysis for several
> applications. Larrabee uses multiple in-order x86 CPU cores


Cool that Intel was telling the truth about their newest processor moving to a fully ordered memory model--it looks like they've fully embraced the idea of scaling laterally.  More once I've had a chance to read the ACM paper.  Thanks for the link!


Sean

Bill Baxter wrote:
> Looks like you have to have have access to the ACM digital library for
> now to get your hands on the paper.
> For those who do, here's the link:
> http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1360612.1360617

Freely-accessible link:

http://softwarecommunity.intel.com/UserFiles/en-us/File/larrabee_manycore.pdf


Andrei

Sean Kelly wrote:
> Bill Baxter wrote:
>> Details are our about Intel's Larrabee multi-core x86 processor.
>> I haven't had a chance to look into it myself yet, but it definitely
>> is looking like the multi-core future is right around the corner.
>>
>> http://levelofdetail.wordpress.com/2008/08/04/larrabee-paper-and-articles/ 
>>
>> http://www.gpgpu.org/cgi-bin/blosxom.cgi/2008/08/04#larrabeeSIGGRAPH08
>>
>> Here's the abstract from the paper they'll present at SIGGRAPH next week:
>>
>> This paper presents a many-core visual computing architecture
>> code named Larrabee, a new software rendering pipeline, a manycore
>> programming model, and performance analysis for several
>> applications. Larrabee uses multiple in-order x86 CPU cores
> 
> 
> Cool that Intel was telling the truth about their newest processor moving to a fully ordered memory model--it looks like they've fully embraced the idea of scaling laterally.  More once I've had a chance to read the ACM paper.  Thanks for the link!

I skimmed the paper for stuff relevant for general-purpose programming, and it's even better than I'd hoped.  Erlang will be perfect for this new architecture, and this dovetails reasonably well with our goal of building on a message-passing model for Tango as well.  The integration with TBB and OpenMP is a nice touch too.  I suppose that means we really need support for at least the scheduling aspects of these in a D library as well.  Hm...


Sean