Chip Multiprocessing

Computerworld - Early next year, top-echelon power users will find out if two heads are better than one. That's when Sun Microsystems Inc., IBM, Compaq Computer Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co. and others will start to roll out high-end servers that take advantage of chip multiprocessing (CMP), a step forward from current systems that load up boxes with multiple discrete chip modules. (Conspicuously absent from this group is Intel Corp., which is betting on speed-enhancing instruction-level parallelism, a less-costly performance booster.)

"The driving force here is, rather than create more complicated processors, why not just put two in the same module?" says Linley Gwennap, principal analyst at microprocessor consulting firm The Linley Group in Mountain View, Calif. "The real problem is, unless operating systems really understand you have pairs of processors, it's not clear you'll see a big benefit." He adds that over time, operating systems will become multiprocessor-chip-savvy, but the programming hurdles will be difficult to overcome.

Early tests are showing that two processors in a single module outperform multiple discrete processors by 50% or more. By putting two CPUs on a single piece of silicon, engineers can take advantage of shorter distances and faster bus speeds when shuttling data between the two CPU cores. The net performance result for IBM's version - called the Power4 processor - is the ability to process 100GB of data per second, or the equivalent of 20 full-length DVDs, says Joel Tendler, director of technology strategy at IBM's server group in Austin, Texas.

Data-crunching like that will likely come along with astronomical system prices - hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars - that will send CMP systems straight to the high-end technical and commercial market. This includes machines that process seismic data for oil exploration companies, e-business servers able to handle unpredictable traffic loads and spikes, data-intensive graphics imaging hardware and computers that crunch genomic data.

Not every high-end application is right for CMP, however. Financial batch-processing programs that sequentially march through a ledger one task at a time will still rely on single-processor systems.

The age for commercially viable CMP systems has arrived, thanks to continuing refinements in chip manufacturing techniques that let engineers pack circuits more densely. The extra die space opens up room for multiple chips - two in the initial systems but perhaps up to eight in later generations of CMP modules.

But simply squeezing two chips into one housing doesn't necessarily create an efficient multiprocessor. The biggest challenge to engineers is keeping these two-headed power plants stoked with data, and this is where some of the biggest design differences will surface among chip vendors.