Mannerisms

A company which feels it can solve one of the key problems of parallel processors - the difficulty of programming them - is Stream Processors, a two year-old spin-out from Stanford University.

Xmos, the parallel processing start-up founded by the Professor of Computer Science at Bristol University, David May FRS, who invented the Inmos Transputer multi-core microprocessor, is thought to be targetting the low end of the FPGA market.

While Intel codenames its processors, during development, after the names of American rivers, PicoChip of Bath goes one better by calling its processors after the names of Bath pubs.

Interesting to see Intel, for so long the exponent of the big clunking chip, argue that simple cores are better than complex ones.

If the process of turning a standard product into one suitable for the embedded market takes the same time as usual, then AMD’s first four-core microprocessor, Barcelona, should be available for embedded applications in March 2008.

If you go onto the Web-site of Montalvo Systems and click the ‘About Us’ button you read: ‘Montalvo Systems is a well funded fabless semiconductor start-up funded by prominent Silicon Valley venture capital firms’.

It’s been a long time getting out on the market, but at last it’s here. Toshiba announced it’s putting a version of the Cell microprocessor on the market.

"The shared memory approach of Intel and AMD to general purpose multi-core processing is like building Hadrian’s Wall with 100 builders spread between Newcastle and Carlisle with one guy with a wheelbarrow delivering the bricks”, says Peter Robertson, managing director of Edinburgh multi-processing company 3L.