Difference between revisions of "CSC103 Notes on von Neumann's architecture"
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* One way to deviate from the von Neumann architecture is to multiply the number of processors in a computer. This is called parallel processing. One way to perform this has been adopted by companies such as Intel in creating several copies of the Pentium on the same chip. These copies are called ''cores''. Multicore processors have several cores on a single chip. Duocore refers to 2-core processors. ''Quad-core'' processors, four cores. Some MacPro computers have 8-core or 12-core processors. | * One way to deviate from the von Neumann architecture is to multiply the number of processors in a computer. This is called parallel processing. One way to perform this has been adopted by companies such as Intel in creating several copies of the Pentium on the same chip. These copies are called ''cores''. Multicore processors have several cores on a single chip. Duocore refers to 2-core processors. ''Quad-core'' processors, four cores. Some MacPro computers have 8-core or 12-core processors. | ||
| − | * One problem, though: the more cores a computer has, the more there will be congestion when the processors need information from the memory. Fairly recent research has shown that the performance of multicore computers drops as the number of cores increases: that's bad news for Intel! | + | * One problem, though: the more cores a computer has, the more there will be congestion when the processors need information from the memory. Fairly recent research at Sandia National Labs (http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/multicore-is-bad-news-for-supercomputers) in 2008 has shown that the performance of multicore computers drops as the number of cores increases: that's bad news for Intel! |
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Revision as of 16:03, 21 February 2012
--D. Thiebaut 15:55, 21 February 2012 (EST)
