8-core embedded processor

AFAIK someone here recently claimed >4 cores will never happen except for servers. Seems like its even feasible in embedded systems :)

The Propellor chip is already 8 cores, unless you're defining "cores" differently ;-)

Have you noticed that Intel recently released their "Atom" CPUs, which are essentially ~800MHz Pentium IIIs built on contemporary fabs (much-shrunked relative to when the original PIII came out) ? They're low-power, small, and hence cheap to make... I suspect it would be pretty for Intel to stick 8 of those on a chip and not have the massive heat/power problem that placing, e.g., 8 3.2GHz Pentium IVs creates...

The next Asus eee PCs are going to use the Atoms... that's probably when I'll bite. :-) Darned nice machines...

servers.

essentially ~800MHz Pentium IIIs built on contemporary

low-power, small, and hence cheap to make... I

have the massive heat/power problem that placing, e.g.,

bite. :-) Darned nice machines...

I'm giving them an eye myself, one of these days... ;)

Yep. Novel communication mechanism too. Designed in-house at the transistor level they say.

Cheers, James Arthur

I think ... Looks like yet more Silicon that's been 'functionally assembled' by programmers, not engineers. Says as much when they refer to their twatty "embedded hypervisor for virtualisation". I.e, we'll force your stuff through our contrived RTOS serial bottleneck, cos' we can't make it work otherwise. Personally I'd raze the project and it's instigators at source.

Hardware wise, we've unbelievable power already to hand, yet most of it squandered by incompetent programmers. When a time comes that I don't have to click on a "Start" button to 'Stop' a program. Or then have to wait a minute for it to actually stop, I'll know the lunatics are no longer running the asylum and we can look forward to some real hardware gains. The big red, paradigm shift, 'Reset button' is screaming to be pressed but it can wait. There's worse things at sea :).

"... NVIDIA CUDA Technology: With the power of NVIDIA CUDA technology and the new CUDA runtime for Windows Vista, programmers can now offload the most intensive processing tasks from the CPU to the NVIDIA GPUs, putting the power of up to 240 multi-threaded processor cores to work. "

With the new GPUs that's around 1 TFLOPS

Un bel giorno TheM digitò:

servers.

Lately, multicore architectures are very popular in automotive applications: one core for ignition control, one core for data acquisition, one core for I/O and so on. It could make some sense for complex applications with a *lot* of critical real-time tasks, but using multicore for everything is a little bit of a stretch. It's often a "brute force" answer to a problem that can be properly solved with correct hardware and software design.

servers.

And then somewhere south of Mayberry it goes chugga-chugga-POOF. Gomer Pyle pulls up in his tow truck, pops the hood and says "Shazam! Only Wally or Goober can fix that. They'll be back from their fishing trip in, oh, 10 days or so."

(Something similar happened to a guy in Germany)

servers.

As transistors approach free, and chip size is dominated by wire bonds, "correct hardware design" may as well be multicore. That may be the best software design, too.

John

On a sunny day (Tue, 17 Jun 2008 13:06:34 -0700) it happened John Larkin wrote in :

Well, lets see, I have not programmed any multicore embedded, so I was just wondering: Now I have 8 separate processes on 8 cores (this is what was being hinted at no?) and now I need a watchdog for each. Are there 8 watchdogs, and 8 reset inputs? Or do I just restart _all_ critical stuff if one process fails (not such a good idea I think).

Maybe in many cases using FPGA (maybe FLASH based) with some small processing cores and the rest done in hardware (state machines if you like) is a more universal, and absolutely faster (crypto one cycle for example) solution, then playing with a lot of cores and having Turing do all the work.

Or do I see this wrong?

no?)

No, if it quits you just pull over to the side and call your automobile club (ANWB?) for a tow :-)

universal,

with a lot

On a sunny day (Tue, 17 Jun 2008 13:52:11 -0700) it happened Joerg wrote in :

no?)

Couple of years ago there were horses here everywhere, even behind my house, now I noticed many again on the land. Not sure what they are used for other then trade, but hey, you could ride one.

no?)

Very normal out here:

But seriously, some people use horses again on a daily basis to beat fuel prices:

On a sunny day (Tue, 17 Jun 2008 14:12:53 -0700) it happened Joerg wrote in :

That is a very nice picture, Joerg!

It may come to that ;-)

Yeah, but have you seen the pile(s) of pollution one of them can leave? ;-)

Cheers! Rich

But, you have to keep putting fuel into them even if you're not driving them. I wonder what a bale or 2 of good hay and say, 25 lbs. of oats cost?

And don't forget about the "consequences" at the other end. ;-)

Thanks, Rich

On a sunny day (Wed, 18 Jun 2008 18:38:18 GMT) it happened Rich Grise wrote in :

Sure, right on my doorstep. But hey, its green:-) so it must be good ;-) And plants love it.

Un bel giorno Joerg digitò:

Tell me about it. The other day I started my car, and a red light with a big scary exclamation mark popped up on the dashboard. I went home with a constant fear of being catapulted out of the windshield; later I've checked the user/service manual, and the description of that indicator was (almost literally): "when this light is on, it means that eiter the parking sensor, or the oil pressure sensor (!), or some other sensor (!!) is broken. Go to the nearest authorized repair center and give them some money" (ok, the last part wasn't literal, just implied :-)).

Of course I didn't go to any damn repair center and the light has never lit up again since then. Probably it was just two cores fighting each other. :)

Ah, when the cars were mechanical devices... those were the days! :)