Intel hopes 48-core chip will solve new challenges

by Stephen Shankland

Intel’s 48-core Single-chip Cloud Computer (SCC) processor (Credit: Intel)

SAN FRANCISCO–Pushing several steps farther in the multicore direction, Intel on Wednesday demonstrated a fully programmable 48-core processor it thinks will pave the way for massive data computers powerful enough to do more of what humans can.

The 1.3-billion transistor processor, called Single-chip Cloud Computer (SCC) is successor generation to the 80-core “Polaris” processor that Intel’s Tera-scale research project produced in 2007. Unlike that precursor, though, the second-generation model is able to run the standard software of Intel’s x86 chips such as its Pentium and Core models.

The cores themselves aren’t terribly powerful–more like lower-end Atom processors than Intel’s flagship Nehalem models, Intel Chief Technology Officer Justin Rattner said at a press event here. But collectively they pack a lot of power, he said, and Intel has ambitious goals in mind for the overall project.

“The machine will be capable of understanding the world around them much as humans do,” Rattner said. “They will see and hear and probably speak and do a number of other things that resemble human-like capabilities, and will demand as a result very (powerful) computing capability.”

Intel is working with companies facing large-scale computing challenges that today require thousands of networked servers. That’s very much a here-and-now problem compared to the more sci-fi challenges of computer vision.

Intel’s idea with the SCC and its ilk, Rattner said: “Could you replace a rack full of equipment today with one or a number of high-core count processors like the SCC?”

Intel CTO Justin Rattner holds a wafer made of Intel’s 48-core experimental SCC chips. (Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)
The chipmaker found only one flaw with the chip so far and has booted Windows and Linux on SCC systems. The company demonstrated computers using the processor running Microsoft’s Visual Studio on Windows and other tasks at the event.

No silver bullet for parallel programming
The Tera-scale project doesn’t fundamentally address one of the big challenges in today’s computing industry, though: getting multicore chips to run today’s computing jobs that are often designed to run as a single thread of instructions rather than independent tasks running in parallel. In days of yore, processor clock frequencies got steadily faster, letting single threads execute faster, but overheating issues led chip designers instead down the multicore path for trying to increase computing power.

“This isn’t a full solution,” Rattner said of the programming challenge. He said that from a programmer’s perspective, the SCC is similar in many ways to a server with 48 cores.

While the chip may not have any silver bullets for the parallel programming challenge, it does have the advantage of some compatibility with existing computer designs. It can run ordinary software for Intel chips, unlike the increasingly capable graphics chips touted by Intel rivals Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices.

“Our thrust is to maintain the compatibility and familiarity of the Intel architecture as we move to more and more performance,” Rattner said. “That’s why we could bring up Windows and Linux environments with relatively little effort.”

The system is different in some ways, though, notably in its lack of cache coherency–technology that keeps data stored in each core’s high-speed memory bank synchronized with the others on the chip. By contrast, Intel’s Larrabee processor, a many-core x86 chip under development for graphics acceleration, is a cache-coherent design that has a large amount of real estate devoted to caching data.

100 chips for research partners
Intel hopes to encourage academics and others to tackle programming challenges on the chip. To that end, Intel plans to share 100 SCC-based systems with various partners in industry and academia.

Microsoft is one such partner. “We’re very excited about this as a research vehicle,” said Jim Larus, director of cloud-computing futures at Microsoft Research.

One major feature of the SCC design is a high-speed “mesh” network that lets each of the 48 cores communicate with others or with the four linked memory controllers. The first-generation Tera-scale chip had such a network, but the second-generation mesh consumes only a third of the power and is accelerated with built-in hardware instructions for minimum communication delays, Rattner said.

That fast communication was designed in part as a response to what Intel industry partners desired, Rattner said. “They were looking for extremely low latency–not just core to core at the chip level, but interchip as well,” he said.

Each link on the chip can carry 64 gigabytes of data per second.

Better power management is one element of the new design. The chip cores can be switched on or off as the chip is running.

“It’s extremely clever, because it means the processor could be run in an adaptive mode. Processors could be turned on and off depending on the applications,” said Jon Peddie, an analyst with Jon Peddie Research.

Overall, the chip consumes between 25 and 125 watts, Rattner said. It’s built using a manufacturing process with 45-nanometer electronics features.

It consists of 24 dual-core modules linked together. A computer based on the chip can accommodate a maximum of 64GB of memory.

The SCC is the second but not last generation of Intel’s Tera-scale project. In the long run, Intel is telling programmers to brace themselves for computers with thousands of processing cores.

Updated at 12:20 p.m. PST

Stephen Shankland writes about a wide range of technology and products, but has a particular focus on browsers and digital photography. He joined CNET News in 1998 and since then also has covered Google, Yahoo, servers, supercomputing, Linux and open-source software, and science. E-mail Stephen, or follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/stshank.

Granted, this isn’t your usual “tech” stuff, but I found these interesting tonight :

http://www.solarcity.com/residential/ the idea of leasing the end-to-end solar / photovoltaic type systems.

http://www.earthshelteredtech.com/ some different home ideas for greater efficiency – I see these have come a long way.

I have to admit, the idea of living close to town, but with a little room, and fairly independently (of the somewhat flaky power grid) is appealing. Just have to figure out how to keep multiple high-speed [net] options available

I’m sure that much of this is more expensive to start (i.e. the cost to build a home that uses 20-25% of the energy of a standard home may be a bit more, up front) but it’s still interesting to look at.

Never went in for serious architecture, but I may have to try dabbling at it again. The “Chief Architect” (‘Home’ series) has gotten some really good reviews, in it’s various “levels” of features. The price point on this is still reasonable.

I’m not at all ready for the price / complexity of their “bigger” versions, hah.

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Now playing: Led Zeppelin – Bron Yr Aur Stomp
via FoxyTunes

(reprinted from the founder of OpenDNS)

Some thoughts on Google DNS

by David Ulevitch, Founder on Dec 3rd, 2009

Google launched a DNS service today, almost exactly four years after I started OpenDNS. This comes as no surprise as it was only a matter of time before one of the Internet giants realized the strategic importance of DNS. I’ve received a lot of questions from bloggers, journalists, friends and most importantly, our users. And so I want to share my thoughts on what this means for the recursive DNS space and what it means for OpenDNS.

First, it’s not the same as OpenDNS. When you use Google DNS, you are getting the experience they prescribe. When you use OpenDNS, you get the Dashboard controls to manage your experience the way you want for you, your family or your organization. People use OpenDNS because we are pioneers and innovators in the DNS space, offering the most secure recursive DNS service around. We run the largest DNS caches, the fastest resolvers, and we offer the most flexibility in controlling your DNS experience. For example, IT folks want to block malware in the DNS, parents sometimes want to block certain content from kids. All of that and more is possible with our DNS. It is not with Google DNS. Of course, we don’t force those things, we offer them as controls that you manage the way you see fit. Providing people with choice is core to our offerings.

Second, it means that Google realizes that DNS is a critical piece of our Internet’s infrastructure and that it’s of strategic importance to help people safely and reliably navigate the Internet. This is something we’ve championed since day one and will always keep as our primary mission. This is why big enterprise customers are switching to OpenDNS too, not because it’s free but because it’s the best and we add value to DNS and improve the security of their networks.

Third, Google claims that this service is better because it has no ads or redirection. But you have to remember they are also the largest advertising and redirection company on the Internet. To think that Google’s DNS service is for the benefit of the Internet would be naive. They know there is value in controlling more of your Internet experience and I would expect them to explore that fully. And of course, we always have protected user privacy and have never sold our DNS data. Here’s a link to our privacy policy.

Fourth, it means that Google is bringing awareness to a wide audience that there is a choice when it comes to DNS and that users don’t have to settle for what their ISP provides. And we believe that having choice is a good thing — just as Internet users have unbundled their email to services like Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail people have been unbundling their DNS and switching to OpenDNS in huge numbers for the last 3+ years because we’re better.

Fifth, it’s not clear that Internet users really want Google to keep control over so much more of their Internet experience than they do already — from Chrome OS at the bottom of the stack to Google Search at the top, it is becoming an end-to-end infrastructure all run by Google, the largest advertising company in the world. I prefer a heterogeneous Internet with lots of parties collaborating to make this thing work as opposed to an Internet run by one big company.

So how will this impact us? It’s too early to tell, but largely I think this is a good thing for us. Google DNS currently offers none of the choice and flexibility that our service does. It’s new and untested. Having said that, it encourages us to keep making our service better. And ultimately, we’re a business that has been growing aggressively since we launched and has been competing in fair markets and winning. It raises awareness about the importance of DNS and it motivates us to continue providing world-class services to a global audience and to keep innovating.

We will continue to do that without distraction from Google or any of the other players in the DNS or security space. But we welcome Google to the neighborhood.

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Now playing: Oingo Boingo – Capitalism
via FoxyTunes

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An alternative to moving from Google Apps Standard edition up to Google Apps Premier edition :

http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/more-extra-storage-for-less.html

This makes great financial sense for personal / family use, if you don’t need some of the extras from Premier. Case in point personally, as a family who uses Standard :

You have one person who may go significantly over their 7+ gig allotment : easy, add 20 gigs of space to that (for 27+g total; it’s in addition to the current level of “free” storage) for USD $5 per year (currently), for that user only. Problem solved, pretty cheaply

This is significantly different cost-wise than moving the entire family / organization to 25 gig total space per year at a cost of $50 per user, and with the requirement of moving all users to this Premier plan. The math is fairly compelling, if you don’t need the service level agreement of 99.9% guaranteed uptime, and the Postini services, etc.

Happy gmailing, etc. and keep it secure!

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Now playing: Steely Dan – Deacon Blues
via FoxyTunes

Two recent articles about Cisco have hit home :

The deal between Cisco, EMC and VMware announced last week may look familiar enough on paper. Technology companies join forces all the time, and in the vast majority of cases it never amounts to anything except a press release and a “free” lunch for anyone brave enough to sit through the initial presentation.

This one may be different, though, and it’s not just because of the players involved. It’s the technology itself–the maturity of enough pieces to make everything work together–coupled with a real business need for change within data centers. Timing is everything, and this one looks like a bulls-eye. Good timing is what made the deal between Intel ( INTC - news - people ) andMicrosoft ( MSFT - news - people ) so significant for the PC. It’s also what made the combination of AT&T ( T - news -people ) and Apple ( AAPL - news - people ) work so well for the iPhone.

The business case is simple enough. Many IT departments have been stockpiling technology for decades. Some of it is incompatible, some of it is unnecessary, and rarely does any CIO know exactly what everything does or how it interacts. Even worse, most of it is incredibly inefficient, which has raised the operating expenses to the point where even the CFO has to take notice.

This is why almost every CIO on the planet is looking at virtualization, cloud computing (private or public) and anything else that will simplify the internal mess, reduce redundancy and improve security. And after nearly a decade, all of these technologies have been banged around enough to attain a reasonable level of confidence.

What’s new in this whole scheme is flexible utilization, and it’s been a piece that has been sorely lacking. Amazon’s cloud approach is a great example of this. A customer can provision servers or turn them off within minutes, rather than the usual weeks or months it takes for an internal IT department. Cisco‘s( CSCO - news - people ) approach is to do just that with its Vblock technology, which can add virtual machines as needed and lop them off when they’re not needed.

“Storage is underutilized 40% to 60%,” said Gary Moore, senior vice president for services at Cisco. “And when you go to provision new applications, it takes four to six months. We can do 250 applications in a weekend.”

(click this link for the full article)

If Cisco wasn’t making enough enemies with its string of bold acquisitions and a brazen push into the server market last spring, it’s now picking a software fight with several more tech heavyweights: Microsoft, Google and IBM.

On Monday, Cisco ( CSCO - news - people ) plans to announce a broad set of new collaboration software tools for instant messaging, e-mail, social networking, videoconferencing, document and video sharing, many of which go head to head with similar offerings from Microsoft‘s (MSFT - news - people ) Live Meeting and Exchange messaging products, as well as enterprise collaboration tools from IBM (IBM - news - people ).

Most threatening to Microsoft among those announcements, according to Yankee Group analyst Zeus Kerravala, may be a new online e-mail offering that Cisco calls Webex Email, an integration of the Postpath e-mail service it acquired last year with the Webex online conferencing platform it bought in 2007. The goal: to catch Microsoft customers in the middle of their move from the on-premises to cloud-based e-mail offerings and woo them to Cisco’s platform. “If Cisco can catch users in the middle of this transition, it gives them a real shot at this market,” Kerravala says.

Google ( GOOG - news - people ) and IBM have both launched their own attempts to own the Web-based mail box of the future with Gmail and IBM’s iNotes (See: “IBM Aims To Undercut Gmail“). But Cisco has a new trick: Its software-as-a-service e-mail uses the same protocol as Microsoft Outlook, allowing users to read their e-mail through the same interface that they’re accustomed to, despite the fact that their e-mail will now be hosted on the Web and also viewable through Cisco’s online software from any location. “Users can rip out their exchange server and retain the same experience,” says Murali Sitaram, a Cisco vice president for collaboration products. Cisco declined to reveal the pricing for any of its products ahead of their official launch.

Cisco’s wide-ranging launch extends well beyond e-mail. The company is planning to offer what it calls internally an Enterprise Collaboration Platform, a shared workspace that can be hosted online or within a company’s firewalls for security purposes. The platform will function as a sort of hybrid of Google Apps and Facebook, allowing users to blog or share documents, instant message and video conference.

Like Facebook or other social platforms, the real value of the Enterprise Collaboration Platform will come when third-party developers create more applications for the service, says Burton Group ( BURUY.PK - news - people ) analyst Mike Gotta. Cisco is offering an application programming interface to programmers who want to sell their apps through the platform. “Right now it’s really just a plate,” says Gotta. “We’re waiting for the food.”

(click this link for the full article)

One of the Windows 7 features many aren’t aware of is how the new OS can use the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU, or simple video cards / subsystems) to do other work than video display, speeding up the user experience.

Windows 7 includes GPGPU / DirectX 11 / the Direct Computing API

I’m more grounded in Windows than I am in OS X, so again I will highlight that, though I’m agnostic when it comes to getting the work done . . .

AMD’s ATI division supports this work via several new cards that directly support DirectX 11 via their “Stream” technology, and Nvidia supports this with their current DX10 / 10.1 cards via CUDA; Nvidia also will continue to support this in upcoming DX11 cards. Both manufacturers have quality drivers (32 and 64 bit mode) for Windows 7; I am just using the default Microsoft WHQL drivers, and have had no issues.

DirectCompute is essentially Microsoft’s answer to Khronos’ OpenCL for Windows. It is intended to be used in games and other consumer software to speed up multimedia algorithms via the considerable computational prowess of on-board GPUs. This leaves the CPU free to do other tasks, or just to increase the number of effective cores / CPU’s that you are throwing against that 1080p movie rendering project.

These days even non-business users want to speed up everything they can in their computing worlds; since most applications do not even activate the hugely powerful 3D  engine of the two most common higher-end GPU makers, there’s a lot of room here to significantly increase system functionality.

One of the many manufacturers lists the following benefits for Windows 7 with their cards :

DirectX Compute: The most significant addition to Windows 7 is the DirectX Compute API for GPU-accelerated compute applications. This API will enable great visual and interactive experiences such as new high-quality video and photo enhancements, simplified ways to interact with your devices, faster, more responsive PCs, and even new realistic gaming effects. One example is a cool new drag and drop feature built directly into Window 7. This feature allows quick and easy copy and conversion of media files from your PC directly to your portable media player. With GPU-acceleration built-in, you can perform this conversion up to 5X faster, so that you spend less time waiting and more time enjoying your movie. DirectX Compute runs on NVIDIA’s 100Mu+ CUDA-enabled GPUs. For a truly Premium Experience for Windows 7 equip your PC with an EVGA GeForce® DirectX 10 GPU with built-in NVIDIA CUDA technology.

DirectX Video Acceleration –High Definition (DXVA-HD): Windows 7 expands the use of the GPU to accelerate video playback and offer a better overall experience for watching high-definition H.264/MPEG-4 video content. DXVA-HD uses the GPU to improve video decode, processing, and presentation. This new hardware-accelerated engine is particularly helpful when dealing with the interactive features of Blu-ray material including the compositing of Picture-in-Picture with fullscreen graphics, a task that is extremely taxing when performed on the CPU.

Direct2D: Aligned to the end-consumer desire for basic applications to be more visually compelling, Microsoft introduced a new 2D API to Windows 7. Direct2D uses the advanced processing power of the GPU to provide hardware acceleration for 2D geometry, bitmaps, and text. Using Direct2D, applications will be able to achieve higher visual quality and better responsiveness.

DirectWrite: Building on the capabilities of Direct2D, DirectWrite offers hardware accelerated fonts, complete with antialiasing for unrivaled visual quality. This API will translate to the best reading experiences ever on a PC.

Microsoft has also made significant changes to the 3D Aero Windows desktop in Windows 7. With the new Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) v1.1 built for Windows 7, the Windows desktop is able to leverage the DirectX 10 API to provide a higher-performance experience. In addition, Windows 7 effectively takes advantage of the GPU to reduce by half the amount of memory consumed to draw desktop windows. The result is better windows responsiveness and more system memory available for other applications.

When similar OpenCL support arrived from Apple (when they introduced Snow Leopard / OS X 10.6), you can bet this trend isn’t going away anytime soon. Again, both ATI and Nvidia support OpenCL.

Further references :

http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/partner/archive/2009/08/22/gpu-computing-and-windows-7.aspx

http://www.microsoft.com/video/en/us/details/9d6d9ca5-3668-4e46-b038-107535de0be7

http://blogs.pcmag.com/miller/2009/10/windows_7_and_gpu_computing_a.php

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2354336,00.asp

http://www.geeks3d.com/forums/index.php/topic,681.0.html

http://www.ditii.com/2009/08/22/gpu-computing-via-directcompute-in-windows-7/

http://www.hpcwire.com/blogs/A-Pervasive-GPU-Computing-Strategy-65667732.html

http://www.evga.com/articles/00511/

Pretty interesting NAS device, for the starter market (like at home). That’s a lot of features; granted, their bottom level, one drive NAS is $300 but still, it’s always refreshing to see innovation like this. And the ability to hook up other drives externally to it is a plus’ you could get a backup rotation going there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-Limited_Error_Recovery enabling and disabling Time
Limited Error Recovery mode on WDC / Western Digital hard drives (RAID or not RAID . . .)

This is a lot of “green” space
Western Digital 2 TB Caviar Green SATA Intellipower 32 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive WD20EADS

Though this is certainly less expensive to build out a RAID system with :
Western Digital 1.5 TB Caviar Green SATA Intellipower 32 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Desktop Hard Drive WD15EADS

And if you just want a ton of space and fast speed :
Western Digital 2 TB RE4-GP SATA Intellipower 64 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Enterprise Hard Drive WD2002FYPS

64 meg of cache directly on each drive.

Sheesh, I remember when my computer didn’t have that much RAM

And naturally, I’m looking forward to USB3 – backwards compatibility is always nice, but we are sure due for some higher throughput, and not everyone has a handy esata port to hook up to one of the drives above. For my local backup solution, I tend to use those handy external cases,  like the Macally G-S350SU Hi-Speed eSata/USB2.0 External Storage Enclosure for 3.5inch SATA HDD.

I’ve gotten a few inquiries about backups and storage since there’s been some focus here, so I’ll share my (not perfect, but seems reasonable) backup plan.

At home, I tend to copy off any new install CD, any new movie I’ve purchased, etc. to my main system, and then place the original on edge on one of the many bookshelves. This means it’ll both be locatable if I need it again, and pretty safe from scratching. Add to that the music collection I’ve carefully digitized to lossless, etc. as well as many high resolution digital pictures, and we have quite a bit of space taken up.

These reside on the primary system internally, across 4 1.5 terabyte drives running in Raid. 2 partitions in the raid manager, 400 gig of striped Raid-0 for speed, and 2.5t of Raid-5 for redundancy. Within Windows 7, the strip is split in half, C and D drives, with D being scratch / temp space. Drive E: is all of the raid5; all are set as primary and GPT partitions under Windows 7.

I backup to external drives, as above, and am paranoid enough about lightning etc. that even with a quality UPS per system I just know it’s hard for electricity to make it across that “air capacitance gap” when the external is unplugged from power and data, at the drive end for my convenience.

Multiple local drives for backup (reused a number of old .75t drives) as well as online backup via service as well as multiple Gladinet targets, for second tier. This keeps me from having to shuttle external disks between locations, in order to keep some of the backups “off site”. It’s not hard to tell who has experienced data loss, is it?

Hope you all have a great day.

Just launched today : New Acronis True Image Home 2010 is the most reliable and easy to use backup solution. Now with online backup option! Delivers powerful insurance for Windows 7 migration.

Acronis is very confident in their new product, and I have to agree; it looks even easier to use than before, and they’ve been steadily adding features instead of Bling. It’s always a good sign when they’re willing to let you try it out for free : Acronis True Image Home 2010 Free Trial Download.

For each picture below, clicking it should show an enlarged version in a new window.

I ran through a couple of Beta testing versions before this new launch, and Acronis looks like they made the minor changes needed. I was really glad to see the launch, as I’ve been relying on this for some time since I’m running the production Windows 7 on my (windows) machines.

Acronis says : “With Acronis True Image Home 2010, rest assured that all your important data including images, music, documents and applications are well protected and can easily be recovered in the event of any disaster. Also the newest Acronis True Image Home 2010 is the best solution for moving your system to Windows 7 and storing your backups online.”

The only portion I would add is that the online backup is optional; you can still use the conventional backup mode to practically any device (DVD, network, firewire or usb hard disk, etc.)

Since I prefer to have both a local copy (external hard disk, unplugged from electrical system when not in use) as well as an offsite backup copy (online is increasingly attractive, as long as it’s well encrypted, which True Image 2010 supports) this really fits my needs.

I’m quite happy with the dual destination backup feature as well; it’s refreshing to see this brought from their Enterprise market down to a much less expensive home / home office product.

Thanks for reading this launch information and review of Acronis True Image 2010. I hope you’ll be as satisfied as I am with the newest version of their flagship product. You can download a completely functional evaluation copy for free here, or you can order the full product for $49.99 directly from the picture link below.

There are a lot of options out there when you’re about to choose a web host.

On the low end, where I live (for my personal sites, at least!) nearly all are “oversold”. If they weren’t, you really would not like the pricing. A related example : shop around, check with any internet pipe provider, and ask them what a guaranteed, non-shared pipe the size of your home broadband would cost per month. Be prepared for some sticker shock.

Low cost and good for many users, i.e. casual – this is where I plug my current personal web host.

A step up in price, and potentially performance : Grid model http://mediatemple.net/webhosting/gs/

As soon as I find some good comparison article out there, I’ll no doubt link it.  So far in 10 months time, I’ve been pretty happy at Dreamhost, with multiple users and domains all in that same < $10 per month package.

DH does offer free web hosting for non-profit groups, which I think is nice of them.  Additionally, GoDaddy offers SSL certs for free to open source projects. They’re who I bought the plain-but-functional SSL cert for this domain through (you’ll notice that you are on a secure site, if you register with this blog; during login, etc. you will be on ‘secure’ pages).

General disclaimer : pretty much any link to any sales site, web hosts included, gives the referrer (your blogger, in this case) some form of payout just for bringing you to their door.  A yup, I admitted it.

Random additional “General” blog topic : http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2009/08/07/cash-for-clunkers/ was pretty interesting. I’m definitely not driving my 13 year old vehicle much these days.