The Hot Chips conference is in full swing, and as expected the emphasis is on multiple-core processors. A report in EE Times details how, as I expected, the puny multiprocessing currently available from Intel and AMD is just the tip of the iceberg. The dam that has held back hardware design is finally starting to burst and it will have serious ramifications regarding the way we create software.

Just today I got an email from a software guy wanting a characterization of the impact of not having L2 cache on a system on the CPU speed. Given that the answer depended on software that had not yet been written and was a delicate balance of cache, pipelining, and the nature of the software itself I had to explain that the answer was indeterminate. How am I going to explain it when they ask me about the impact of parallel hardware architectures that are completely outside of his (and for that matter, my) experience base?

Nick Tredennick was quoted in the article as saying that the microprocessor has held back innovation in hardware design. He said something very similar to me in a panel half a dozen years ago. One way or another, it appears that the box is being opened and that we are about to be treated to a number of novel architectures.

Larry Mittag