The Future of Intel Processors

madison writes to mention coverage at ZDNet on the future of Intel technology. Multicore chips are their focus for the future, and researchers at the company are working on methods to adapt them for specific uses. The article cites an example were the majority of the cores are x86, with some accelerators and embedded graphics cores added on for added functionality. "Intel is also tinkering with ways to let multicore chips share caches, pools of memory embedded in processors for rapid data access. Cores on many dual- and quad-core chips on the market today share caches, but it's a somewhat manageable problem. "When you get to eight and 16 cores, it can get pretty complicated," Bautista said. The technology would prioritize operations. Early indications show that improved cache management could improve overall chip performance by 10 percent to 20 percent, according to Intel." madison also writes, "In another development news Intel has updated its Itanium roadmap to include a new chip dubbed 'Kittson' to follow the release of Poulson. That chip will be based on a new microarchitecture that provides higher levels of parallelism."

Comments

Re:Instead of more power

[CajunArson]

That would also improve overall security too.

I hate to break it to ya, but in a low-level language like C, doing proper bounds checks and data sanitization required for security does not help performance (although it doesn't harm it much either, and should of course always be done)
    There is a lot of bloated code out there, but the bad news for people who always post "just write better code!" is that the truly processor-intensive stuff (like image processing, 3D games) is already pretty well optimized to take advantage of modern hardware.
    There's also the definition of what "good code" actually is. I could write a parallelized sort algorithm that would be nowhere near as fast as a decent quicksort on modern hardware. However, on hardware from 10 years from now with a big number of cores, the parallelized algorithm would end up being faster. So which one is the 'good' code?
    As usual, real programming problems in the real world are too complex to be solved by 1-line Slashdot memes.

Where all the CPU time will go

[Animats]

Where will all the CPU time go on desktops with these highly parallel processors?

• Virus scanning. Multiple objects can be virus scanned in parallel.
• Adware/spyware. The user impact from adware and spyware will be reduced since attacks will be able to use their own processor. Adware will be scanning all your files and running classifiers to figure out what to sell you.
• Ad display. Run all those Flash ads simultaneously. Ads can get more CPU-intensive. Next frontier: automatic image editing that puts you in the ad.
• Indexing You'll have local search systems indexing your stuff, probably at least one from Microsoft and one from Google.
• Spam One CPU for filtering the spam coming in, one CPU for the bot sending it out.
• DRM One CPU for the RIAA's piracy searcher, one for the MPAA, one for Homeland Security...
• Interpreters Visualize a Microsoft Office emulator written in Javascript. Oh, wait.