The Economics of Chips With Many Cores

meanonymous writes "HPCWire reports that a unique marketing model for 'manycore' processors is being proposed by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign researchers. The current economic model has customers purchasing systems containing processors that meet the average or worst-case computation needs of their applications. The researchers contend that the increasing number of cores complicates the matching of performance needs and applications and makes the cost of buying idle computing power increasingly prohibitive. They speculate that the customer will typically require fewer cores than are physically on the chip, but may want to use more of them in certain instances. They suggest that chips be developed in a manner that allows users to pay only for the computing power they need rather than the peak computing power that is physically present. By incorporating small pieces of logic into the processor, the vendor can enable and disable individual cores, and they offer five models that allow dynamic adjustment of the chip's available processing power."

Comments

Hardware DRM....

[foobsr]

In related news, an initiative of car manufacturers spearheaded by Ford has introduced an enabling 'cylinder per need' model. Car performance is wirelessly monitored in real time to give the customer the option to add in additional power according to his needs if he has signed to a plan designed to optimally fit his profile (composed on his overall lifestyle information). This also creates a new exciting opportunity to reduce individual carbon tyreprints for the consumer.

CC.

Re:Hardware DRM....

[peas_n_carrots]

Those 100-cylinder engines sure are light. After all, the metal necessary to build such an engine would only make up the majority of the weight of the car. Use 10 cylinders to drag around the rest of the 90, now that's efficiency.

Re:Hardware DRM....

[gnasher719]

It's a valid point. Certainly the European car manufacturers have a "gentleman's agreement" to limit their high-end sports cars to a maximum speed of 155mph (around 250km/h). Now, I know that I wouldn't use that kind of power every day, but it would annoy me to know that the car was capable of more but prevented from doing so by an artificial limitation. If I'm paying for a 500bhp car, I want it to run like a 500bhp car... I suppose people like you are the reason for the limitation.

Re:Here's a better business model

[Anonymous Coward]

While that's a far brighter solution than what these idiots came up with it still doesn't address my foremost concern on the subject. I don't want my damned computer to have another corporate backdoor recording everything my CPU touches on some chip manufacturers server farm.

It's like this:

Regular assholes work like this:

1. You eat food.
2. You digest food.
3. You shit digested food.

Proposed assholes work like this:

1. You eat food.
2. A stranger sticks his grubby hands up your asshole and fondles your shit.
3. You digest food.
4. Said stranger accounts for how much food was digested.
5. You shit digested food.
6. Stranger makes you pay only for the food you ate.

See, I don't want a stranger fondling my shit while it's still inside me. I'd much rather just estimate beforehand how much food I need, and buy accordingly. If I only need 2 servings, I dont want to have to eat 5 servings and then let someone repossess my leftovers.

I think I'm going to use this metaphor for all of these retarded business models.

Re:How is this [business model] new?

[CheShACat]

That was my first thought. Then my second thought was having to go through the "Intel Genuine Advantage" activation process every 45 minutes.

Re:Why?

[Alsee]

The cost of designing one core is the same as the cost of designing 10 or 100 cores, because copy and paste was invented several years ago.

Copy-pasting a hundred cores will cost almost ten times as much as copy-pasting 10 cores because you have to pay the patent holder who invented copy-paste.

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