TRIPS: Less Cores, More Innovation

An article at Science Blog mentions that there is a prototype of a new kind of higher-performance processor that increases speed with new technology rather than simply adding more and more cores, which could possibly put an end to the futile multi-core race, and shift focus back to the gigahertz’s race.

Like I’ve said before, more and more cores will help mainly for multi-tasking. It may increase speed for single applications, but it requires the application to be written in a way that assumes your computer has multiple cores. However, most programs do not to this, hence making the advantage of multiple cores almost limited to multi-tasking. Your physical limitations only enable you to do a certain amount of tasks at the same time. But if you increase the power of each individual core, to my understanding, you can do calculations faster even when just running single applications, which can be good for the gaming and entertainment industry.

“The TRIPS prototype is the first on a roadmap that will lead to ultra-powerful, flexible processors implemented in nanoscale technologies,” said Burger, associate professor of computer sciences.
Current “multicore” processing technologies increase speed by adding more processors, which individually may not be any faster than previous processors.

Adding processors shifts the burden of obtaining better performance to software programmers, who must assume the difficult task of rewriting their code to run well on a potentially large number of processors.

-Science Blog.