June 22nd, 2012
Xeon Phi has one huge advantage over the OpenCL or CUDA-bound GPU compute solutions. It's an X86 chip. So, ultimately, you can program it in line like an X86 co processor together with your ordinary Xeon chippery, without having to resort to fancy programming interfaces and such. It helps cut the learning curve manifold, according to the users and vendor alike. The ready pool of supported apps will be impressive at the official launch later this year. That being said, Xeon Phi also has one huge dis-advantage over the OpenCL or CUDA-bound GPU compute solutions. It's an X86 chip. This means outdated, ISA baggage-loaded, less transistor-efficient and harder to scale core than the custom tailored more modern GPU architectures like AMD GCN or Nvidia Kepler. And, at least behind the closed doors, both AMD and Nvidia GPUs have been shown booting Linux on their own, without requiring a CPU. So, how does it stand performance wise? Its double precision FP throughput is the same as the typical AMD Radeon HD7970 card which costs one quarter of the amount but with much smaller memory, 3 GB, and no ECC. The FirePro W9000 'proper' workstation version with ECC memory and such will likely be much closer in price. Both AMD offerings reach 4 TFLOPs in single precision peak FP, twice that of the initial Xeon Phi. The current Nvidia offerings based on Kepler GK104 are far behind in both SP and especially DP FP. Only the yearend GK110, with its 3 TFLOP SP and 1.5 TFLOP DP expected performance, will equalise the performance. But, by that time, AMD will have Sea Islands GPUs, and Xeon Phi might end up faster than it is now. Phi should get that speed up sooner rather than later, as Intel's own Xeon high end CPUs will be faster in FP. The 3.3 GHz 10 core Xeon E5-2600 V2 Ivy Bridge EP will give you over 270 DP GFLOPS peak per socket around yearend, while, a year later, Xeon E5 V3 Haswell EP should bring that up to beyond 600 DP GFLOPs for a 12 core version when using the FMA optimisations. To keep themselves attractive, the Phi's should be at least 3x as fast per socket as the general purpose CPUs they augment - meaning 2 TFLOPs DP at least by 2014. And yes, as it's an X86 after all, Phi could boot Linux on its own, Phi-only clusters becoming a possibility someday. Either way, you'll see Xeon Phi in quite a few upcoming supercomputers, including some No.1 world leader candidates this year and next. And yes, being in a typical GPU card format, it can fit in your standard high end desktop or workstation PC too.
GDDR6 Memory Coming in 2014
Published by: VR-Zone June 22nd, 2012
Without any doubt, GDDR5 memory is prevalent high-speed memory of today. The standard attracted a lot of companies and powers systems from graphics cards to networking switches, from cars to rockets and even lunar landers. Thus, the big question remains, when the successor is going to arrive? You might not know this, but AMD i.e. Advanced Micro Devices is actually the company behind the creation of GDDR memory standard. The company did a lot of great work with GDDR3 and now with GDDR5, while GDDR4 was simply too short on the market to drive the demand for the solution. In the words of our sources, "GDDR3 was too good for GDDR4 to compete with, while everyone knew what was coming with GDDR5." GDDR5 as a memory standard was designed as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The Single-Ended GDDR5 i.e. Dr. Jekyll was created to power the contemporary processors, while the Differential GDDR5 i.e. Mr. Hyde was designed to "murder Rambus and XDR". Ultimately, the conventional S.E. GDDR5 took off better than expected and clocked higher than anyone hoped for. While the estimates for the top standard were set at 1.5GHz QDR, i.e. 6 "effective GHz" with overclocking, we got both AMD and NVIDIA actually shipping retail parts at 1.5GHz, with overclocks as high as 1.85GHz (7.4 "GHz"). This brought us to more than 250GB/s achiveable bandwidth, meaning that the purpose of Differential GDDR5 was lost. Enter GDDR6. This is the memory standard that will take us to the 2020 and beyond, i.e. third decade of the 21st century. GDDR6 is being built with a lot of changes and accent on the driving silicon, that we expect this part to last, if not outlast the GDDR3 memory, which launched in 2004 and still makes for vast majority of GDDR memory shipments. The hard work at AMD is still going strong, with the effort now is starting to be on certifying the standard through AMD-chaired organizations at JEDEC. There is a big number of interested parties, such as NVIDIA, Intel, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, CISCO and others. However, this is the field where AMD is the company in charge, and regardless for whom are you rooting for, without AMD's memory team - our present (and the future) would look significantly different.
The Internet Protocol: Past, Present, and Future - Part 1 Source: http://vr-zone.com/articles/the-internet-protocol-past-presentand-future--part-1/16355.html June 22nd, 2012
Source: http://vr-zone.com/articles/gddr6-memory-comingin-2014/16359.html
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