Processor Design Challenges Vojin G. Oklobdzija University of California / Integration ISSCC Microprocessor Design Workshop 2001 Thursday, Feb 8th, 2001, San Francisco, CA
Processor Design Challenges Will technology be able to keep up ? Will the bandwidth keep up ? Will the power be manageable ? Can we deliver the power ? What will we do with all those transistors ? April 4, 2019 V. G. Oklobdzija, Integration Corp.
CMOS Performance Roadmap Source : B. Davari, Symp. VLSI Circuits, 1999 April 4, 2019 V. G. Oklobdzija, Integration Corp.
V. G. Oklobdzija, Integration Corp. April 4, 2019 V. G. Oklobdzija, Integration Corp.
V. G. Oklobdzija, Integration Corp. Performance 3X / generation Source: ISSCC, uP Report, Hot-Chips April 4, 2019 V. G. Oklobdzija, Integration Corp.
V. G. Oklobdzija, Integration Corp. Total transistors 3X / generation Logic transistors 2X / generation Source: ISSCC, uP Report, Hot-Chips Source: ISSCC, uP Report, Hot-Chips April 4, 2019 V. G. Oklobdzija, Integration Corp.
Processor Design Challenges Performance seems to be tracking frequency increase Where are the transistors being used ? 3X per generation growth in transistors seems to be uncompensated as far as performance is concerned April 4, 2019 V. G. Oklobdzija, Integration Corp.
Well, it will make up in power … 100 x4 / 3years 10 Power (W) 1 0.1 0.01 80 85 90 95 Courtesy of Sakurai Sensei April 4, 2019 V. G. Oklobdzija, Integration Corp.
Gloom and Doom predictions Source: Shekhar Borkar, Intel April 4, 2019 V. G. Oklobdzija, Integration Corp.
V. G. Oklobdzija, Integration Corp. Power versus Year High-end growing at 25% / year RISC @ 12% / yr X86 @ 15% / yr Consumer (low-end) At 13% / year April 4, 2019 V. G. Oklobdzija, Integration Corp.
V. G. Oklobdzija, Integration Corp. Energy-Delay product is improving more than 2x / generation Saving Grace ! April 4, 2019 V. G. Oklobdzija, Integration Corp.
V. G. Oklobdzija, Integration Corp. X86 efficiency improving dramatically 4X / generation average improving 3X / generation High-End processors efficiency not improving April 4, 2019 V. G. Oklobdzija, Integration Corp.
Power Delivery Problem (not just California) Your car starter ! Source: Shekhar Borkar, Intel April 4, 2019 V. G. Oklobdzija, Integration Corp.
V. G. Oklobdzija, Integration Corp. Trend in L di/dt: di/dt is roughly proportional to I * f, where I is the chip’s current and f is the clock frequency or I * Vdd * f / Vdd = P * f / Vdd, where P is the chip’s power. The trend is: P f Vdd on-chip L package L slightly decreases Therefore, L di/dt fluctuation increases significantly. Source: Shen Lin, Hewlett Packard Labs April 4, 2019 V. G. Oklobdzija, Integration Corp.
What to do with all those transistors ? We have reached 170 Million We will reach 1 Billion in the next 5 years ! Memory transistors will save us from power crisis What should the architecture look like ? April 4, 2019 V. G. Oklobdzija, Integration Corp.
What Drives the Architecture ? Processor to memory speed gap continues to widen Transistor densities continue to increase Application fine-grain parallelism is limited Time and resources required for more complex designs is increasing Time-to-market is as critical as ever Multiprocessing on the Chip ? April 4, 2019 V. G. Oklobdzija, Integration Corp.
V. G. Oklobdzija, Integration Corp. ccNUMA Design Source: Pete Bannon, DEC Metrics Topologies Cache Coherence C4 M4 IO C5 M5 C0 M0 C7 M7 C6 M6 X bar or Network C1 M1 C2 M2 C3 M3 April 4, 2019 V. G. Oklobdzija, Integration Corp.
How can we survive the challenges ? Advances in Technology and Circuits (SOI) Advances in High-Performance I/O Advances in Power Management and Delivery New Trends in Chip Architecture April 4, 2019 V. G. Oklobdzija, Integration Corp.