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There's No Such Thing As a General-Purpose Processor

CowboyRobot writes: David Chisnall of the University of Cambridge argues that despite the current trend of categorizing processors and accelerators as "general purpose," there really is no such thing and believing in such a device is harmful.

"The problem of dark silicon (the portion of a chip that must be left unpowered) means that it is going to be increasingly viable to have lots of different cores on the same die, as long as most of them are not constantly powered. Efficient designs in such a world will require admitting that there is no one-size-fits-all processor design and that there is a large spectrum, with different trade-offs at different points."

3 of 181 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Efficiency by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 4, Funny

    A whole woman consumes 100 watts.

    D'oh! Human, not woman.

    I got myself an nvidia woman. She takes 400 watts.

    --
    I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
  2. Re:Efficiency by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Sounds like a hottie

  3. Re:Efficiency by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Unfortunately she requires two inputs. :(