HTML version of Scripted Foils prepared 26 January 97

Foil 12 Comments on COTS for Hardware

From Variety of Foils Used Starting January 97 General -- 1997. by Geoffrey C. Fox *

1 Currently MPP's have COTS processors and specialized networks but this could reverse
  • Pervasive ATM will indeed lead to COTS Networks BUT
  • Current microprocessors are roughly near optimal in terms of megaflops per square meter of silicon BUT
  • As (explicit) parallelism shunned by modern microprocessor, silicon is used for wasteful speculative execution with expectation that future systems will move to 8 way functional parallelism.
2 Thus estimate that 250,000 transistors (excluding on chip cache) is optimal for performance per square mm of silicon
  • Modern microprocessor is around ten times this size
3 Again simplicity is optimal but this requires parallelism
4 Contrary trend is that memory dominates use of silicon and so performance per square mm of silicon is often not relevant

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