Recently in Multi-core processors Category

MSC Vertriebs has joined Intel's Embedded Building Blocks initiative, intended to offer system integrators and resellers aoute to board-based embedded products.

Will ARM Cortex become the processor of choice in the mobile tablet.

The imminent launch of Apple's tablet, on January 26th, could make the mobile computing device which is not a netbook but nor is it a smartphone, the mobile product of choice in 2010.

Do designers consider multi-core architecture support as a critical factor in the choice of embedded operating systems? Not generally, says market research firm Venture Development Corporation (VDC).   

Multi-core architectures are increasingly being used by designers but the availability of software support for multi-processing systems seems to be of relatively low importance even to those developers who indicated that they were using a multi-core or multi-core and multiprocessor design.

Is this the first in-car navigation hardware to use multi-core processor performance? I have had a quick scan around and I cannot find anything similar.

NEC's NaviEngine1 has no fewer than four ARM11 MPcores carrying out multi-processing. With all that processing power it requires a fast internal bus and so NEC has integrated a Serial ATA interface.

I have reported before on the interesting phenomenon of students implement general purpose parallel processing system design on a PS3 games console.

I thought it was just a whacky idea to promote Cell or to keep the students amused. Not a bit of it. Multi-processor-based graphics engines may be good at rendering your Halo 3 images but they can also be put to use for other number-crunching tasks such as analysing geological data.

Toshiba’s approach to Cell differs from that of development partners Sony and IBM in that it sees the multiprocessor architecture as co-processor technology which sits alongside the host CPU, not replacing it.

“We do not want to get in to a battle creating the next host processor architecture,” Emily Shirley, head of product marketing at Toshiba Europe, told EW.

Freescale Semiconductor's multi-core system-on-chip (SoC) processor for 3D graphics on the car dashboard combines a Power core with a PowerVR graphics core designed by UK firm Imagination Technologies.

But the chip will also provide audio functions such as noise cancellation and voice recognition for dashboard control.

NetLogic Microsystems' latest knowledge-based processor, the NL8000, can achieve an impressive 1.2 billion decisions per second.

This is more than double the packet processing performance of the firm's last device and the trick is a dual-core technology and a first-of-its-kind ability to parse decisions into 64 unique processing elements.

Students in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have used a PS3 to study the parallel processing capabilities of the Cell microprocessor.

No, these weren't gamers, but the first students on a course at MIT based on the workings of the microprocessor which was developed by IBM, Sony and Toshiba.

Freescale Semiconductor, post private equity buyout, seems to have made an important committment to its Scottish wafer fab at East Kilbride where over 1,200 people are employed.

According to a report in the Sunday Herald, Denis Griot, senior vice-president and general manager for Freescale in Europe, indicated that the Scottish fab was integral to Freescale's business strategy and no job cuts were planned.

With all this talk of Intel and AMD dual and quad cores, the sleeping giant of the multi-core processor battle could be PowerPC. Freescale is demoing its MPC8641D dual-core device based on Power Architecture technology at the second annual Multicore Expo Conference and Exhibition on March 27-29.

This is the firm's first dual core Power processor and if EEMBC is to be belived the results are pretty impressive.

Anyone interested in parallel processing silicon circa 1995. I have just noticed that two IMST805 -G25S : Floating Point Transputers sold for £22 on eBay.

Multi-core processors may be the new rock n roll for the likes of Intel, AMD and Texas Instruments, but what they are saying about the potential of parallel processing architectures is not really new. All they are doing is taking the concept to the wider embedded systems market.

Last week Mike Hames, senior v-p, Texas Instruments, speaking the company's Developer Conference (TIDC) in Dallas, was predicting the likelihood that hundreds of processors will be integrated on a single, three-dimensional chip.