Multicore technologies, including hyper-threading, virtualization and multi-threading, are helping AdvancedTCA and MicroTCA meet today’s critical requirements found in Financial, Healthcare and military applications.

Availability of multicore processing platforms according to silicon providers, such as, Intel, Freescale, Cavium and others have proven to offer higher compute performance, reduced chip count, and lower costs with reduced power consumption. However the reduced power is per processor and not necessarily lower power consumption when combined. Today, multicore processing capability is being integrated into AdvancedTCA, and MicroTCA – each of which has its own benefits and limitations for critical customer applications. Integrating multicore processing technologies, including multi-threading, hyper-threading, and virtualization, is helping meet the critical requirements of not only the rugged military application but even Telco Central Offices (CO), Data Centers, and financial networks like the New York Stock Exchange.

The critical customer applications pose design folks with some very interesting challenges. There are those dynamics that demand the ability to withstand extended temperature ranges and high/low pressure changes, such as with altitude and underwater depth seen in the military applications. Single Board Computers (SBC) must also withstand severe shock and vibration elements in difficult environments and without sacrificing performance. The military also has the increased need for mobility; so these applications are now requiring additional reduction in size, weight, and power to maximize transportability. This eliminates the option to increase the footprint to make room for more power or more performance making multicore design attractive.
The Multicore technology has proven to be an attractive option to help conquer these challenges, since it offers the ability to scale applications and add features within embedded form factors without dramatically affecting the energy variables such as thermal output and power consumption. Putting it into layman terms, multicore processor architecture places two or more processor-based cores within a single processor. Then this multicore processor fits directly into a single processor socket, but the operating system treats each of its execution cores as a discrete logical processor, with all the associated execution resources. According to our semiconductor brethren the notion behind this implementation of the chip's internal architecture is a “separate and defeat” approach. By dishing-out the work load performed by the single microprocessor core in traditional microprocessors and spreading it over multiple execution cores, a multicore processor can perform more work within a given time slot. For example, design engineers can integrate controls that previously required separate dedicated systems into one system. This means that only one computer is needed for control and visualization tasks – even for critical and highly complex real-time applications.

To maximize the capabilities of multicore technologies, a number of key system-level features must also be available. As an example we referred to the platform approach from Intel for multicore processing which combines a multicore architecture with complementary system-enhancing technologies to enable developers to leverage the architecture very efficiently. These multicore technologies include thread-level parallelism, hyper-threading technology, and virtualization. Thread-level parallelism allows one thread running from an application and a second thread running from an operating system, or parallel threads running from within a single application. Hyper-threading technology enables processors to execute tasks in parallel by weaving together multiple "threads" in a single-core processor. And last but not least virtualization allows multiple operating systems and applications to run as "virtual machines" in independent partitions on one platform with simpler hardware administration. This makes overall systems more stable because processes that would collide on single-core systems can be separated.

In conclusion multicore processors are quickly becoming the processor design of choice and dare we look back at the single microprocessor core knowing that the “most-likely” scenario suggest the industry will never go back. The advantages of multicore are too numerous to return to the single core solutions even though the design challenges with multicore can be over whelming at times, the grinding of teeth by design engineers who are reaching the brink of insanity are well worth the benefits of multicore.
Ernie Bergstrom is President of Crystal Cube Consulting. His blade market report entitled, “Ruggedized Blade Market Takes Their Cut of the Stimulus Pie” was recently released and available at http://www.crystalcubeconsulting.com/ You can reach him at ernie@CrystalCubeConsulting.com.