Microprocessor Forum

Manufacturers are strutting their stuff at the Microprocessor Forum. Some of the rollouts: Turmoil writes "AMD has demonstrated working SMP. http://www.amd.com/news/prodpr/20165.html" hol writes: "German news site Heise.de reports that a German startup named PACT surprise-announced their processor design at the Microprocessor Forum in San Jose. Apparently this thing is a 128 cpu parallel computing deal which has its roots in the programmable gate array world." infodragon writes "All Linux Devices.com is running a pretty cool article about an X86 chip running on 1 AA battery. They demonstrated it by playing a VCD movie. They also say that mp3s can be decoded/played on it."

Comments

PACT/XPP: At last a decent new architecture!

[Morgaine]

The world of CPU design has been quite stagnant in recent years. Yes, there have been truly massive improvements in an engineering sense, but architecturally speaking, the latest Pentium and the various 64-bit candidates are really no different to a little ol' Motorola 68000 at heart. Harvard, RISC and superscaler designs haven't departed significantly from the same basic and extremely limited architecture which dates back to three decades ago or more.

But PACT's XPP is a different thing altogether, a dataflow computing engine on a chip. This thing is so far outside the current norm that it holds exhalted company with only a very few select others: my list of such exceptional architectures would probably comprise the Intel iA432, the Inmos Transputer, the Crusoe, and now the XPP. (I'm only including real candidates for implementation as micros, not research or demonstrator platforms of which there have been many hundreds of great ones.)

It's beautiful!

My research work on parallel architectures and concurrent languages really needed hardware like this to blossom. I wish the XPP had appeared then!

Re:Meanwhile, in the exclusive Wintel Clubhouse...

[tracktwo]

You're just another one of those Linux-zealot Microsoft bashers spewing the party-line on Slashdot in order to gain karma.

Come on, that's so last year. In order to gain karma these days you need to say whatever is against the perceived party-line, and complain about how all the moderators will moderate you down for being so avant-garde.

Be a brain donor

[chazR]

Thankyou for applying to sell your living brain to us. After extensive tests on your cognitive ability, we are happy to offer you $1.80 for your brain. Our trained staff will be with you to perform the extraction in the next hour.

Thankyou, once again, for donating your unused brain.

Not that powerful

[technos]

I see a LOT of comments asking how the AA battery powered CPU stacks up against a Transmeta. While I have no stats on the dinky x86, I have an equivalent that you'll find interesting.

I bought a Micro-ATX Cyrix MediaGX mobo a while back, $59/+shipping, to use as a part of a custom router setup. Well, lo and behold, I'm reading the manual, and it states that it will do full-frame rate MPEG1 (VCD) and DVD playback. Now, don't get me wrong, but this is a 166 chip. What do I do? I pop in a DVD drive, ghost Windows 98SE to it and install the software player (OEM version of PowerDVD, with support for the funny accelerated video chipset.) And it plays 'The Road Warrior' just fine!

It doesn't take much to do VCD/DVD playback. The 166 Cyrix is about equivalent to a Pentium 120. The Transmeta Crusoe is equivalent to a Pentium III-500, for a max of seven times faster.

Re: Not that powerful

[Jacques Chester]

I bought a Micro-ATX Cyrix MediaGX mobo a while back ... And it plays 'The Road Warrior' just fine!

I note here that the MediaGX chip is not just "yer average CPU", it's a CPU+media operations. It's designed in a similar but broad vein than MMX and SSE. The idea is to allow one chip to be the heart of a el-cheapo media box, such as the mythical "set top box" that will make some hungry MBA a jazillionaire.

Cyrix created this chip to try and pre-empt-slash-cash in on the "set top" market. The idea was to allow you to use the MediaGX by itself (one chip, cheaper to build and easier to design) versus a "standard" CPU + media copros. Hence the MediaGX has a whole bunch of instructions tuned for sound and video processing.

When you add the fact that DirectX has native support for MediaGX instructions, you find that it's quite feasible for it to handle a DVD decoding load. I'm not sure that the same could be said, however, of a vanilla Pentium of the same era (without MMX).

be well;

JC.

--
"Don't declare a revolution unless you are prepared to be guillotined." - Anon.

Motorola annoucment

[Auckerman]

Motorola also annouced 1Ghz G4's, as planned. Coming to a Mac near you.

Dual Athlons should be better than dual PIII's

[GauteL]

When it comes to single processors, the Athlon and the PIII are pretty much equal on a clock for clock basis (Athlons reach higher speeds).

But when it comes to SMP, the Athlons should have a BIG advantage; the EV6-protocol.
The EV6 which is the bus used by the Athlon-arcitechture, and licensed from Compaq (Alpha)
provides DEDICATED bandwith for each of the CPUs,
(to the chipset). The PIII's however must all share the bandwith, which is not really sufficient for optimal operation. Don't know what Intel has done for the P4 though..

Re:iDragon - wowzers!

[ToLu the Happy Furby]

Virtually any IC that you'll find anywhere can withstand voltage fluctuations, especially ones that small. If a processor rated for 1.5V couldn't run at 1.1V, you can bet they would write 1.8V or so for the recommended Vcc level. Even your TTL ICs can withstand that type of change.

This is nothing that should be seen as impressive, it's just PR that will fool the masses and make the engineers wonder why it would exist any other way.

Individual IC's can, yes. The point is that when you have many many IC's strung together to make a chip, the tolerances for the whole chip become much tighter. Perhaps you've heard of fan-out/fan-in? This is extremely impressive, dude. Don't believe me, try switching the voltage for your P3 from 1.6V to 1.2V and see how it does.

Meanwhile, in the exclusive Wintel Clubhouse...

[ackthpt]

Just saw that M$ isn't voicing any upcoming support for AMD's Hammer. Heaven forbid anyone accuse M$ of using that old Monopoly power to kill a product...


--
Chief Frog Inspector