Cutting-edge computing: Using new commodity architectures (original) (raw)

The recent trends in commodity processor architectures exploit multiple cores to achieve higher performance. Some examples include multicore processors that replicate identical serial CPU cores on a single chip, e.g., quad-core CPU chips available from Intel and AMD in 2007. The current trend seems to indicate that the number of cores is growing at a rate governed by the Moore's law. An ongoing and contrasting trend has been the development of heterogeneous processor architectures that combine fine-grain and coarse-grain parallelism using tens or hundreds of disparate processing cores. Examples of such processors include the Cell BE processor, which is used as a CPU in workstations, game consoles, and manycore accelerators (e.g., GPUs), which are designed with the goal achieving higher parallel-code performance for a class of applications.