Description of Content

Multi-core processors are now becoming commonplace as circuit limits are reached which prevent further performance gains from simple clock-speed increases. Major industrial projections expect processors with hundreds of cores within a few years. But current hardware architectural approaches are not applicable to the scale of these future processors. In addition, programming techniques, required to write general purpose parallel programs to make effective use of these systems, are regarded as inadequate. These are therefore very active research areas and there are a number fo different but inter-related directions currently being explored.

The aim of this module is to study the technological issues which will determine both the future hardware architecture and the programming techniques which will be necessary to extract performance from muliti-core processors. The limitations of current approaches will be examined and those areas of research which are most likely to provide solutions will be studied in detail.

location

Manchester (5 Day Course)