Intel details future Larrabee graphics chip

As the number of cores goes up the watt requirements goes up too ?

Will we need a zillion watts of power soon ?

Bye,
Skybuck.

Skybuck Flying wrote:
As the number of cores goes up the watt requirements goes up too ?

Will we need a zillion watts of power soon ?

Bye,
Skybuck.

Since the ATI Radeon™ HD 4800 series has 800 cores you work it out.

--
Dirk

http://www.transcendence.me.uk/ - Transcendence UK
http://www.theconsensus.org/ - A UK political party
http://www.onetribe.me.uk/wordpress/?cat=5 - Our podcasts on weird stuff

On Tue, 5 Aug 2008 13:30:52 +0200, "Skybuck Flying"
wrote:

As the number of cores goes up the watt requirements goes up too ?

Not necessarily, if the technology progresses and the clock rates are
kept reasonable. And one can always throttle down the CPUs that aren't
busy.


Will we need a zillion watts of power soon ?

Bye,
Skybuck.


I saw suggestions of something like 60 cores, 240 threads in the
reasonable future.

This has got to affect OS design.

John

On Tue, 05 Aug 2008 08:24:04 -0700, John Larkin
wrote:

On Tue, 5 Aug 2008 13:30:52 +0200, "Skybuck Flying"
wrote:

As the number of cores goes up the watt requirements goes up too ?

Not necessarily, if the technology progresses and the clock rates are
kept reasonable. And one can always throttle down the CPUs that aren't
busy.


Will we need a zillion watts of power soon ?

Bye,
Skybuck.


I saw suggestions of something like 60 cores, 240 threads in the
reasonable future.


Oops, 4 threads per core is 320 threads.

My XP is currently running 33 processes and maybe a couple dozen
device drivers.

John

"John Larkin" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 5 Aug 2008 13:30:52 +0200, "Skybuck Flying"
wrote:

As the number of cores goes up the watt requirements goes up too ?

Not necessarily, if the technology progresses and the clock rates are
kept reasonable. And one can always throttle down the CPUs that aren't
busy.


Will we need a zillion watts of power soon ?

Bye,
Skybuck.


I saw suggestions of something like 60 cores, 240 threads in the
reasonable future.

I can see it now... A mega-core GPU chip that can dedicate 1 core per-pixel.

lol.




This has got to affect OS design.

They need to completely rethink their multi-threaded synchronization
algorihtms. I have a feeling that efficient distributed non-blocking
algorihtms, which are comfortable running under a very weak cache coherency
model will be all the rage. Getting rid of atomic RMW or StoreLoad style
memory barriers is the first step.

Chris M. Thomasson wrote:
"John Larkin" wrote in
message ...
On Tue, 5 Aug 2008 13:30:52 +0200, "Skybuck Flying"
wrote:

As the number of cores goes up the watt requirements goes up too ?

Not necessarily, if the technology progresses and the clock rates are
kept reasonable. And one can always throttle down the CPUs that aren't
busy.


Will we need a zillion watts of power soon ?

Bye,
Skybuck.


I saw suggestions of something like 60 cores, 240 threads in the
reasonable future.

I can see it now... A mega-core GPU chip that can dedicate 1 core
per-pixel.

Why not?
Probably configured as a systolic array
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systolic_array


--
Dirk

http://www.transcendence.me.uk/ - Transcendence UK
http://www.theconsensus.org/ - A UK political party
http://www.onetribe.me.uk/wordpress/?cat=5 - Our podcasts on weird stuff

"Dirk Bruere at NeoPax" wrote in message
...
Skybuck Flying wrote:
As the number of cores goes up the watt requirements goes up too ?

Will we need a zillion watts of power soon ?

Bye,
Skybuck.

Since the ATI Radeon™ HD 4800 series has 800 cores you work it out.

Just note that the 4870 needs TWO of those 6 pin power leads...

Rarius


---- Posted via Pronews.com - Premium Corporate Usenet News Provider ----
http://www.pronews.com offers corporate packages that have access to 100,000+ newsgroups

On Aug 5, 5:26*am, Dirk Bruere at NeoPax
wrote:
Skybuck Flying wrote:
As the number of cores goes up the watt requirements goes up too ?

Will we need a zillion watts of power soon ?

Bye,
* Skybuck.

Since the ATI Radeon™ HD 4800 series has 800 cores you work it out.

--
Dirk


Each of the 800 "cores", which are simple stream processors, in
ATI RV770
(Radeon 4800 series) are not comparable to the 16, 24, 32 or 48
cores that will be in Larrabee. Just like they're not comparable to
the 240 "cores" in Nvidia GeForce GTX 280. Though I'm not saying
you didn't realize that, just for those that might not have.

On Tue, 5 Aug 2008 12:54:14 -0700, "Chris M. Thomasson"
wrote:

"John Larkin" wrote in message
.. .
On Tue, 5 Aug 2008 13:30:52 +0200, "Skybuck Flying"
wrote:

As the number of cores goes up the watt requirements goes up too ?

Not necessarily, if the technology progresses and the clock rates are
kept reasonable. And one can always throttle down the CPUs that aren't
busy.


Will we need a zillion watts of power soon ?

Bye,
Skybuck.


I saw suggestions of something like 60 cores, 240 threads in the
reasonable future.

I can see it now... A mega-core GPU chip that can dedicate 1 core per-pixel.

lol.




This has got to affect OS design.

They need to completely rethink their multi-threaded synchronization
algorihtms. I have a feeling that efficient distributed non-blocking
algorihtms, which are comfortable running under a very weak cache coherency
model will be all the rage. Getting rid of atomic RMW or StoreLoad style
memory barriers is the first step.

Run one process per CPU. Run the OS kernal, and nothing else, on one
CPU. Never context switch. Never swap. Never crash.

John

In article ,
John Larkin writes:
| On Tue, 5 Aug 2008 12:54:14 -0700, "Chris M. Thomasson"
| wrote:
| "John Larkin" wrote in message
| .. .
|
| This has got to affect OS design.
|
| They need to completely rethink their multi-threaded synchronization
| algorihtms. I have a feeling that efficient distributed non-blocking
| algorihtms, which are comfortable running under a very weak cache coherency
| model will be all the rage. Getting rid of atomic RMW or StoreLoad style
| memory barriers is the first step.
|
| Run one process per CPU. Run the OS kernal, and nothing else, on one
| CPU. Never context switch. Never swap. Never crash.

Been there - done that :-)

That is precisely how the early SMP systems worked, and it works
for dinky little SMP systems of 4-8 cores. But the kernel becomes
the bottleneck for many workloads even on those, and it doesn't
scale to large numbers of cores. So you HAVE to multi-thread the
kernel.

SGI were (are?) the leaders, but all of HP, IBM and Sun have been
along the same path. Modern Linux is multi-threaded.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.