Intel outlines multicore CPU developments

by Jan Harris

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In a paper released this month at the Programming Language Design and Implementation conference in San Diego, Intel outlined plans to cloak all of the cores in a multicore chip in an ‘exoskeleton’. This would make the cores look like either a single core, or a series of conventional x86 cores.

Coating multicore chips, which have 60 or 80 cores, masks the intricate functionality of the chip, so that they are easier for computer manufacturers and software developers to adapt to.

Multicore chips are likely to contain several different types of core - x86 processing cores, accelerators and graphics cores, for example.

In 2006, Intel demonstrated a prototype chip with 80 computing cores. This gave rise to questions about whether such chips would run existing software and operating systems and how data traffic, heat and latency problems would be resolved.

Intel’s plan to cloak the cores, seeks to address some of these issues.

A further paper at the International Symposium on Computer Architecture, also in San Diego, outlines a hardware scheduler that will allocate computing jobs among the various cores on a chip.

This would allow certain computing tasks to be completed in less time and could prevent hot spots developing. If a single processor core starts to overheat, the scheduler can move the task to another core.

Although a substantial amount of further development is needed, Intel hopes to bring out massive multicore chips in about five years time.

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