CSC/ECE 506 Fall 2007/wiki1 4 a1

Architectural Trends

VLIW(Very Long Instruction Word)

one VLIW instruction encodes multiple operations; specifically, one instruction encodes at least one operation for each execution unit of the device. For example, if a VLIW device has five execution units, then a VLIW instruction for that device would have five operation fields, each field specifying what operation should be done on that corresponding execution unit. To accommodate these operation fields, VLIW instructions are usually at least 64 bits in width, and on some architectures are much wider.

The instruction scheduling logic that makes a superscalar processor is just boolean logic. In the early 1990s, a significant innovation was to realize that the coordination of a multiple-ALU computer could be moved into the compiler, the software that translates a programmer's instructions into machine-level instructions.

This type of computer is called a very long instruction word (VLIW) computer.

Statically scheduling the instructions in the compiler (as opposed to letting the processor do the scheduling dynamically) can reduce CPU complexity. This can improve performance, reduce heat, and reduce cost.

Unfortunately, the compiler lacks accurate knowledge of runtime scheduling issues. Merely changing the CPU core frequency multiplier will have an effect on scheduling. Actual operation of the program, as determined by input data, will have major effects on scheduling. To overcome these severe problems a VLIW system may be enhanced by adding the normal dynamic scheduling, losing some of the VLIW advantages.

Static scheduling in the compiler also assumes that dynamically generated code will be uncommon. Prior to the creation of Java, this was in fact true. It was reasonable to assume that slow compiles would only affect software developers. Now, with JIT virtual machines for Java and .net, slow code generation affects users as well.

There were several unsuccessful attempts to commercialize VLIW. The basic problem is that a VLIW computer does not scale to different price and performance points, as a dynamically scheduled computer can. Another issue is that compiler design for VLIW computers is extremely difficult, and the current crop of compilers (as of 2005) don't always produce optimal code for these platforms.

Also, VLIW computers optimise for throughput, not low latency, so they were not attractive to the engineers designing controllers and other computers embedded in machinery. The embedded systems markets had often pioneered other computer improvements by providing a large market that did not care about compatibility with older software.

In January 2000, a company called Transmeta took the interesting step of placing a compiler in the central processing unit, and making the compiler translate from a reference byte code (in their case, x86 instructions) to an internal VLIW instruction set. This approach combines the hardware simplicity, low power and speed of VLIW RISC with the compact main memory system and software reverse-compatibility provided by popular CISC.

Multi-threading

Computer architects have become stymied by the growing mismatch in CPU operating frequencies and DRAM access times. None of the techniques that exploited instruction-level parallelism within one program could make up for the long stalls that occurred when data had to be fetched from main memory. Additionally, the large transistor counts and high operating frequencies needed for the more advanced ILP techniques required power dissipation levels that could no longer be cheaply cooled. For these reasons, newer generations of computers have started to exploit higher levels of parallelism that exist outside of a single program or program thread.

This trend is sometimes known as throughput computing. This idea originated in the mainframe market where online transaction processing emphasized not just the execution speed of one transaction, but the capacity to deal with massive numbers of transactions. With transaction-based applications such as network routing and web-site serving greatly increasing in the last decade, the computer industry has re-emphasized capacity and throughput issues.

One technique of how this parallelism is achieved is through multiprocessing systems, computer systems with multiple CPUs. Once reserved for high-end mainframes and supercomputers, small scale (2-8) multiprocessors servers have become commonplace for the small business market. For large corporations, large scale (16-256) multiprocessors are common. Even personal computers with multiple CPUs have appeared since the 1990s.

With further transistor size reductions made available with semiconductor technology advances, multicore CPUs have appeared where multiple CPUs are implemented on the same silicon chip. Initially used in chips targeting embedded markets, where simpler and smaller CPUs would allow multiple instantiations to fit on one piece of silicon. By 2005, semiconductor technology allowed dual high-end desktop CPUs CMP chips to be manufactured in volume. Some designs, such as Sun Microsystems' UltraSPARC T1 have reverted back to simpler (scalar, in-order) designs in order to fit more processors on one piece of silicon.

Another technique that has become more popular recently is multithreading. In multithreading, when the processor has to fetch data from slow system memory, instead of stalling for the data to arrive, the processor switches to another program or program thread which is ready to execute. Though this does not speed up a particular program/thread, it increases the overall system throughput by reducing the time the CPU is idle.

Conceptually, multithreading is equivalent to a context switch at the operating system level. The difference is that a multithreaded CPU can do a thread switch in one CPU cycle instead of the hundreds or thousands of CPU cycles a context switch normally requires. This is achieved by replicating the state hardware (such as the register file and program counter) for each active thread.

A further enhancement is simultaneous multithreading. This technique allows superscalar CPUs to execute instructions from different programs/threads simultaneously in the same cycle.

Multi-core

Multi-core CPUs are typically multiple CPU cores on the same die, connected to each other via a shared L2 or L3 cache, an on-die bus, or an on-die crossbar switch. All the CPU cores on the die share interconnect components with which to interface to other processors and the rest of the system. These components may include a front side bus interface, a memory controller to interface with DRAM, a cache coherent link to other processors, and a non-coherent link to the southbridge and I/O devices. The terms multi-core and MPU (which stands for Micro-Processor Unit) have come into general usage for a single die that contains multiple CPU cores

Speculative Execution

One problem with an instruction pipeline is that there are a class of instructions that must make their way entirely through the pipeline before execution can continue. In particular, conditional branches need to know the result of some prior instruction before "which side" of the branch to run is known. For instance, an instruction that says "if x is larger than 5 then do this, otherwise do that" will have to wait for the results of x to be known before it knows if the instructions for this or that can be fetched.

For a small four-deep pipeline this means a delay of up to three cycles — the decode can still happen. But as clock speeds increase the depth of the pipeline increases with it, and modern processors may have 20 stages or more. In this case the CPU is being stalled for the vast majority of its cycles every time one of these instructions is encountered.

The solution, or one of them, is speculative execution, also known as branch prediction. In reality one side or the other of the branch will be called much more often than the other, so it is often correct to simply go ahead and say "x will likely be smaller than five, start processing that". If the prediction turns out to be correct, a huge amount of time will be saved. Modern designs have rather complex prediction systems, which watch the results of past branches to predict the future with greater accuracy.