Tensilica®, Inc. and the U.S. Department of
Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
today announced a collaboration program to explore new design concepts
for energy-efficient high-performance scientific computer systems.
The joint effort is focused on novel processor and systems architectures
using large numbers of small processor cores, connected together with
optimized links, and tuned to the requirements of highly-parallel
applications such as climate modeling. These demanding scientific
problems require 100 to 1000 times higher computation throughput than
today’s high-end computing installations, but
conventional systems require so much electricity, generate so much heat,
and require such complex physical installations that the costs would be
prohibitive. This collaboration in application-directed supercomputing
aims at making “exascale systems”
(up to one quintillion floating point operations per second) feasible
and cost-effective.
The two organizations are well-suited for such a collaboration.
Tensilica is the recognized leader in configurable processor technology
and has become a leading provider of energy efficient processors for
mobile audio and video applications. The Berkeley Lab Computing Sciences
organization manages one of the world’s
leading supercomputing centers and has extensive experience in deploying
leading-edge computer architectures to accelerate scientific discovery.
“Our studies show that energy costs make
current approaches for supercomputing unsustainable,”
stated Horst Simon, Associate Laboratory Director, Computing Sciences
for Berkeley Lab. “Hardware-software
co-design using tiny processor cores, such as those made by Tensilica,
holds great promise for systems that reduce power costs and increase
practical system scale. Such processors, by their nature, must deliver
maximum performance while consuming minimal power –
exactly the challenge facing the high performance computing community.
One of the most compute-intensive applications is modeling global
climate change, a critical research application and the perfect pilot
application for energy-efficient computing optimization.”
“Berkeley Lab is a world leader in providing
supercomputing resources to support research across a wide range of
disciplines, but their experience in climate modeling is especially
well-suited for this project,” stated Chris
Rowen, Tensilica’s president and CEO. “If
we can better understand the factors influencing climate change –
and do so in a dramatically more energy-efficient way –
then we open the door for other breakthroughs. We are delighted to be
able to contribute to this effort, applying Tensilica Xtensa processors
and software to help solve a problem of global significance. The same
ultra-efficient processor technology that powers cellular phones can now
contribute to a breakthrough in energy-efficient scientific computing.”
The team will use Tensilica’s Xtensa LX
extensible processor cores as the basic building blocks in a massively
parallel system design. Each processor will dissipate a few hundred
milliwatts of power, yet deliver billions of floating point operations
per second and be programmable using standard programming languages and
tools. This equates to an order-of-magnitude improvement in floating
point operations per watt, compared to conventional desktop and server
processor chips. The small size and low power of these processors allows
tight integration at the chip, board and rack level and scaling to
millions of processors within a power budget of a few megawatts.
The co-design effort will use automatic generation of processor designs,
including simulation models, FPGA-based hardware implementation, and
software tools to enable rapid prototyping and evaluation of processor
instructions sets, interfaces, multi-processor communications
mechanisms, and application enhancements.
The research effort also will address the challenges of optimizing
memory and communication bandwidth to the massive array of processors,
distribution of application functions across the array, and development
of suitable prototyping and software development methods for large-scale
application-optimized systems.
About Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has been a leader
in science and engineering research for more than 70 years, and holds
the distinction of being the oldest of the U.S. Department of Energy's
National Laboratories. The Lab manages a number of national user
facilities, including the National Energy Research Scientific Computing
Center (NERSC), which provides supercomputing resources to 2,900 users
at national laboratories and universities. Managed by the University of
California, Berkeley Lab conducts unclassified research across a wide
range of scientific disciplines with key efforts in fundamental studies
of the universe; quantitative biology; nanoscience; new energy systems
and environmental solutions; and the use of integrated computing as a
tool for discovery. For more information, go to www.lbl.gov.
About Tensilica
Tensilica, Inc. is the recognized leader in configurable processor
technology and has leveraged that technology to become the leading
supplier of licensable controllers and DSP cores for mobile audio and
video applications. Tensilica offers the broadest line of controller,
CPU, network, and specialty DSP processors on the market today –
including full software toolchain and modeling support - in both an
off-the-shelf format via the Diamond Standard Series cores and with full
designer configurability with the Xtensa processor family. The modern
design behind all of Tensilica’s processor
cores provide semiconductor companies and system OEMs with the lowest
power, smallest area solutions for high-volume products including mobile
phones and other consumer electronics, networking and telecommunications
equipment, and computer peripherals. For more information on Tensilica’s
patented, benchmark-proven processors, visit www.tensilica.com.
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