Inside Intel's $20M Multicore Research Program

An anonymous reader writes "You may have heard about Intel's and Microsoft's efforts to finally get multi-core programming into gear so that there actually will be a developer who can program all those fancy new multicore processors, which may have dozens of core on one chip within a few years. TG Daily has an interesting article about the project, written by one of the researchers. It looks like there is a lot of excitement around the opportunity to create a new generation of development tools. Let's hope that we will soon see software that can exploit those 16+core babies. 'The problem of multi-core programming is staring at us right now. I am not sure what Intel's and Microsoft's expectations are, but it is quite possible that they are in fact looking at fundamental results from the academic centers to leverage their large work force to polish and realize the ideas that come forth. It calls for a much closer collaboration between the centers and the companies than it appears at first sight.'"

Comments

Most PCs are fast enough

[OrangeTide]

The thing is, most PCs have plenty of computing power as a single core system. The hard sell is getting people to upgrade those machines mainly used for email and browsing and video playback. I think as time moves on and quad core becomes the "low-end" you will see less demand for higher end hardware. Unless the next version of Windows requires a core dedicated to the OS or something in the future.

Re:Most PCs are fast enough

[betterunixthanunix]

The software currently in use does not involve computationally complex problems, and so the computers appear to have "plenty of computational power." This is likely to be the case for a very long time, but there are useful but complex tasks computers might do. For example, a computer that might interact with its user purely by voice -- more advanced voice and language recognition systems are likely to require significantly more cores and computational power than is currently in wide use. Even more advanced might be a system that can interpret visual data, such as facial expressions. These systems are desirable, but need a lot of work, and won't be widely deployed for a long time (decades at least).

Re:Most PCs are fast enough

[avandesande]

It's a valid point.... if the 'speed' of cars increased at the rate it did during the beginning of the century, we'd be driving 400mph cars around.
We are certainly capable of making cars that are that fast, but they wouldn't really be any more useful or provide more utility than a slower car.

Re:Most PCs are fast enough

[KillerCow]

The thing is, most PCs have plenty of computing power as a single core system

And 640k ought to be enough for anyone.

I think as time moves on and quad core becomes the "low-end" you will see less demand for higher end hardware.

My last purchase (6 to 8 months ago) was a "low-end" machine. I chose carefully to make sure that it was low-end and not bargain-basement. It has two cores. I don't think it's even possible to buy a single core machine through mainstream channels anymore. Today's low-end (multi-core) is more than adequate for most users to use over the next few (read: four) years.

Unless the next version of Windows requires a core dedicated to the OS or something in the future.

You do not understand how the scheduler works.

Re:Most PCs are fast enough

[peragrin]

Yes but voice processing is done best by dedicated hardware rather than generic. would a voice chip that can do that processing and only that processing be far more efficient? Call it the VPU, it can go next to the GPU, PPU. or it can be one of the 8 cores surrounding a cell processor. The trend that generic processors can do everything will end. maybe a plug and pray architecture where you can pick which cores you want installed on your system.

Re:Most PCs are fast enough

[play_in_traffic]

The thing is, most PCs have plenty of computing power as a single core system. . . . Rather than multi core technology resulting in elegant new software to take advantage of it, I suspect that software will get worse (think loop until done, rather than schedule an interrupt). Faster processors have not made software, better rather they have resulted in an abundance of bad software!

Re:Most PCs are fast enough

[pete-classic]

No production car can even approach 400mph. Not even close. You'd be doing very well to spend half a million on a "production car" that can crack 400kmph.

That leaves out the questions of range (you'd be lucky to get three miles to the gallon), and, you know, being able to actually maneuver on the public roads at that speed.

You're nuts.

-Peter

Re:Most PCs are fast enough

[PitaBred]

We've gotta get the bandwidth before 1080p is even remotely possible for video mail. The thing is, for the VAST majority of people, there is no killer app that will require an upgrade right now. A low-end machine will push 1080p in H.264 no problem. A 50MP picture of junior would again require more bandwidth, and a bigger monitor. Not a faster machine.

Re:Most PCs are fast enough

[OrangeTide]

And 640k ought to be enough for anyone. funny you quoted my response to that issue immediately after: "I think as time moves on and quad core becomes the "low-end" you will see less demand for higher end hardware."

I don't think it's even possible to buy a single core machine through mainstream channels anymore. Conroe-L's are still shipping. And Intel has a single core ultra low power chip on the horizon designed to compete with ARM. Your phone, pda, heart monitor, etc won't be symmetric multiprocessor any time soon.

You do not understand how the scheduler works. xbox 360 already works this way. three cores. 2 for the game, 1 for the OS.

As a professional kernel developer, I realize that locking cores into specific tasks is a lot easier than writing a general purpose scheduler that performs equivalently.

Re:Most PCs are fast enough

[Belial6]

"Get an apartment near your work."

Terrible, terrible idea. Definitely not thought out.

Multicore Programs

[Ironsides]

Software that will exploit 16+ cores already exists. The problem is, it is not consumer (home/office) software. There does not yet exist an application that people use that really needs multiple cores. Video encoding is getting there, but most people will never use it.

Show me the money Intel.

[stratjakt]

SMT processors of this type are only useful for accelerating a certain type of problem set, and useless for most general computing.

We've had SIMD multicore PC's forever, and they're useless as desktops. I write this from a quad xeon machine, repurposed as my dev box, as CPU1 grinds away at about 75% all day long, the rest idle. It's been like that for more than a decade, it'll be like that until MIMD hits the street with a whole new paradigm of programming languages behind it - a handful of C compiler #pragma directives from intel isn't going to make this work.

It's not simply a matter of "coders don't know how to do it." It's a matter of these multi-core "general purpose" CPUs are only really useful for a fairly limited set of specific problems.

Eg; writing a game engine with a video thread, audio thread and an input thread still leaves 13 cores idle. You really cant thread those much farther (the ridiculously parallel problem of rendering is handled by the GPU).

Simply starting processes on different procs doesn't help all that much, since they all fight over memory and I/O time. The point of diminishing returns is reached fairly quickly.

But hey, if all you do is run Folding@home so you can compare your e-cock with the other kids on hardextremeoverclockermegahackers.com, well I have some good news!

As for me, I'm seeing AMD's multiple specific purpose core approach as being more viable, as far as actually making my next desktop computer perform faster.

Savain says it best at rebelscience.org: "Even after decades of research and hundreds of millions of dollars spent on making multithreaded programming easier, threaded applications are still a pain in the ass to write."

Re:Show me the money Intel.

[everphilski]

a handful of C compiler #pragma directives from intel isn't going to make this work.

That's OpenMP, and depending on the program, it can work wonders. In an hour I parallelized 90% of a finite element CFD code with it. Yes, it sucks for fine-grained parallelization.

Intel's product is Threaded Building Blocks, and is not built around pragmas, and is both commercial and OSS. It's pretty slick and will let you do the more fine-grained optimizations.

It's a matter of these multi-core "general purpose" CPUs are only really useful for a fairly limited set of specific problems.

Not entirely true, it's just useful for problems that need a processor.

I write this from a quad xeon machine, repurposed as my dev box, as CPU1 grinds away at about 75% all day long, the rest idle.

... obviously, you have more processor than you need. I, on the other hand, have a quad core Opteron that is currently over 350% utilization. I tank it almost 24/7.

the ridiculously parallel problem of rendering is handled by the GPU

Not for long. Raytracing is making a comeback.

As for me, I'm seeing AMD's multiple specific purpose core approach as being more viable, as far as actually making my next desktop computer perform faster.

If you can't even tank one core of your Xenon, it's doubtful.

"Even after decades of research and hundreds of millions of dollars spent on making multithreaded programming easier, threaded applications are still a pain in the ass to write."

I'd caveat that by saying "threading arbitrary program X is a pain in the ass." There are plenty of useful programs that are easily parallelized.

Faster CPU's are not the problem

[EEPROMS]

I've got a dual core machine sitting on the desk before me and the cpu rarely goes above 20% load. The strange thing though is it is still slow when loading programs and this is due to the hardisk (SATA II) being the bottle_neck on my system. I could fix this to some degree with a RAID setup but the real question is why isnt this being looked at more closely ?