Holistic Design of Multiple-Core Architectures

Abstract

In recent years, the processor industry has moved from a uniprocessor focus to increasing numbers of cores on chip. But we cannot view those cores in the same way we did when we lived in a uniprocessor world. Previously, we expected each core to provide good performance on virtually any application, with energy efficiency, and without error. But now the level of interface with the user and the system is the entire multicore chip, and those requirements need only be met at the chip level-no single core need meet them. This provides the opportunity to think about processor architecture in whole new ways.