Future of x86 With each extra core we are seeing more wasted heat and energy go into missed branches of execution.
What is the answer? 1000+ core count massively parallel microprocessors, that are based on a modified 486 core. Assuming .65 nm process you could actually get to 4000+ cores on a single piece of silicon today. Basically taking Niagara, ditch CMT, using the most powerful non-superscaler x86 core, add 64-bit (particularly memory address space,) throw in nicely sized shared cache on the chip). I ask because as far as I know there generally hasn't been a mainstream operating system that was designed to support this. Another thing that may happen as a result of this, is that out of order execution, multiple pipelines, and speculative execution will be moved into the OS/Compiler. (At least until people grok MasPar coding) We basically have to take lessons learned from HPC and apply them to a single system image. What is the question? These chips will be here before we can blink an eye. Sun's Solaris has a long history of SMP designs (Especially after the Cray acquisition), and have continued to greatly enhance Solaris's NUMA efficiency over the last decade. What are your thoughts regarding scaling Solaris to thousands of cores within the next couple of years? -brian P.S. - I am assuming that Sparc will do something similar with Sparc.
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