All: Article on future CPUs. Keep in mind that DEC's StrongArm now belongs to Intel.
joey
The Rapidly Changing Face Of Computing
A Stack Of Chip News
By Jeffrey R. Harrow
I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest to hear that CPUs were
going to get faster and smaller, use less power, and cost less. I
expect it, and I'd only be surprised to be told otherwise.
Indeed, the whole idea of convergence -- the coming together of
computing, communications, content, and consumer electronics --
is based on this constant increase in price and performance. And
of course, we're not about to be disappointed. Recent
announcements include:
Merced: Intel and Hewlett-Packard have announced that their
64-bit successor to the Pentium, due out sometime in 1999, will
leverage a new architecture called Explicit Parallel Instruction
Computing. Intel said it expects that, with specialized compiler
pre-work, EPIC will help Merced predict which of the myriad
branches a program is likely to take, and "pre-compute" the results
of those paths so they can be ready very quickly if and when
needed. This could result in Merced's providing better than the
three-times-Pentium-performance its anticipated 900-MHz clock
speed suggests.
But don't ring the death knell for today's 32-bit processors quite
yet. Intel said it expects Merced to initially inhabit only high-end
servers, while Pentium-class chips will continue to power desktops
and mobile computers for several more years to come. And, as
we've come to expect, Intel said it expects the performance of
these 32-bit chips to continue growing.
UltraSPARC-III: Sun Microsystems' 64-bit UltraSPARC-III is
expected to debut late next year in sample quantities, running at
600 MHz and optimized for large multiprocessor applications. Sun
said it plans to double the speed at which the CPU can
communicate with memory to 2.4 gigabits per second, and
estimates the chips will perform at a SPECint95 of 35 and a
SPECfp95 of 60 -- compared with a 300-MHz Pentium's
performance figures of 11.7 and 8.15, respectively. (See
specbench.org for an explanation of what the SPEC
tests are all about.) According to Sun, "At 600 MHz,
[UltraSPARC-III] will deliver 6 billion operations per second."
K7: Advanced Micro Devices is working on a 500+ MHz K7
chip that will use a packaging technology similar to Intel's new Slot
design. It has also been reported that the K7 will use certain
elements of Digital Equipment's Alpha EV6 bus protocol for even
faster performance.
A bit closer in, an enhanced 21 million transistor K6 chip will add
new graphics instructions. Also, a Level 2 cache on-chip, which
can dramatically boost performance, will increase its system bus
speed from 66 MHz to 100 MHz, and will increase its clock
speed to at least 350 MHz. Additional details are available in
AMD's news release from Oct. 14.
Mxi: Cyrix, too, said it plans new 3-D oomph for its 6-by-86
processor, the Mxi, which is due out in late 1998. It will sport new
graphics instructions and a large cache memory capable of
accessing data at up to 2 Gbps. Additional details are in the Cyrix
news release from Oct. 15. It was also reported that Cyrix could
have the rights to use Intel's Slot 1 technology -- the new CPU
packaging technology Intel implemented with its Pentium II and, so
far, hasn't licensing to the general marketplace.
PowerPC: Not to be left out, the Oct. 16 Computergram
describes IBM's intent to rename the PowerPC 630 as the
Power3, and move it to a 0.2 micron copper process before the
end of this year. Available in 200-MHz samples, IBM said it
expects the chip to move to 300 MHz, then to 500 MHz over
time, yielding performance of 70 SPECfp95 and 30 SPECint95.
StrongARM -- Although we don't often
notice, the vast majority of processors
don't find their way onto our desktops,
but are used in the myriad devices that
less obtrusively compute. And following
Moore's Law, these embedded devices
continue to get faster and more powerful
as well. For example, it's now possible to
perform limited speaker-independent,
continuous-speech recognition in a
handheld device.
This ability to perform ever-more
complex tasks in your pocket will, of
course, continue to expand, driven by
new, high-performance, low-power
CPUs such as the future Digital 300-MHz StrongARM chip. This
chip could enable inexpensive consumer electronics devices to
play back DVDs, offer videoconferencing, and enable
software-only modems through the on-chip addition of an
Attached Media Processor optimized for such tasks.
"Digital is essentially adding a second brain to do audio and video
processing," said Jim Turley, senior analyst and senior editor of
Microprocessor Report. "It's pretty exotic stuff."
What difference could such a 300-MHz low-power
chip-on-steroids make? For comparison, consider that WebTV's
set-top box uses a 167-MHz chip, while RCA's version makes do
with a 40-MHz chip. Imagine what Internet set-top boxes will be
able to do with StrongARM's forthcoming performance.
JavaChip: If you're into a mixture of silicon and caffeine, Sun has
just announced the microJava 701. It's a low-power processor
optimized for running Java code, and should deliver 13,332
Caffeinemarks or 200 Dhrystone MIPS when it begins volume
production in the second half of next year.
Memory: Oh, and all these processor advances may get another
boost in performance from advances in the memory corner.
Rambus said it plans to introduce a new high-speed memory
interface in 1999 that, it says, will dramatically speed up one of
today's bottlenecks -- moving data between the CPU and main
memory (that's the problem high-speed cache memory addresses
to some extent today, but its capacity is limited).
Direct Rambus memory (or Direct RDRAM) is a high-speed
interface that will be built directly into new dynamic RAM chips,
enabling memory transfer speeds of up to 1.6 Gbps -- a 10-times
improvement over today's typical speeds!
A very tangled Web indeed, complete with the specter of
incompatible packaging and graphics instruction sets through
which the marketplace will have to wade. But the curve remains
ever upward. We'll have to watch and see how these individual
moves play out.
And watch we will, because the results will define the next moves
of the rapidly changing face of computing.
For previous columns, go to the Jeffrey Harrow archive.
Jeffrey Harrow is a senior consulting engineer for the corporate
strategy and technology group at Digital Equipment. A more
extensive version of this discussion, as well as other discussions
about the innovations and trends of contemporary computing --
The Rapidly Changing Face of Computing -- can be found at
digital.com. His opinions do not necessarily
reflect the opinions of Digital. |
