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

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.

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.