Tilera Tile64 – multicore action heating up

Just when I thought the Cell Processor was the future platform for high performance + low cost CPU intensive applications – there is more hot action in the multicore processor space.

First a note about Sony’s much anticipated cell processor board 

I am disappointed by the low-key launch of the Sony Cell Processor Board at SIGGRAPH 07. More negative news hit us in the form of performance problems with Madden 2008 on the PS3 vs XBox360. Could this be due to the programming complexity ? To top it, Sony/Toshiba/IBM do not seem to promote the cell processor for networking applications.

Tilera founded by MIT Professor-turned-entrepreneur Dr Anant Agarwal announced a 64-core chip called Tile64. 

The Register UK Reports : The Silicon Valley-based start-up’s first product links together 64 RISC-like cores running at up to 1.0GHz. The real magic, however, stems from the five-lane switches used to link each core in an 8X8 grid that provides up to 32 terabits per second of data bandwidth across the whole chip. You end up with a product – Tile64 – that can tear through software threads.

Chip architecture :

A quick look at the chip architecture.

 

1. Tiles are arranged in a 8×8 grid (contrast with the architecture of the Cell Processor which featured two counter rotating rings)

2. An absolutely cool feature is the On Chip Four DDR2 controllers and Dual Gig E On Chip.

3. Each “tile” has a L1 and L2 Cache which should make programming for it somewhat easier. The SPE’s in the Cell Processor do not have these caches, which contribute to the programming complexity.

Networking applications

This is where I am most interested in, the Tilera site claims that

• 10 Gbps Snort® processing
• 20+ Gbps iptables (firewall)
• 20+ Gbps nProbe
• 16 X 16 SAD at 540 MBlocks/s
• H.264 HD video encode for two streams of 720p @ 30 Fps

Tilera explicitly says that the Tile64 chip is most suited for networking. I am going to follow this closely. Currently, Unsniff Network Analyzer with all options turned on (TCP session tracking, PDU analysis, User Objects) is running out of CPU juice around 6-10Mbps. 

What I would be really interested in

The first question is : well how easy is it to program.

Tilera also sells a product called the Multicore Development Environment (MDE) which claims to ease software development.

• iLib standards-based parallel programming library for efficient inter-core communication
  • Socket-like communication
  • Message passing
  • Streaming channels
• Graphical multicore application debugging and profiling

 

Interesting times ahead.

[tags] Tilera, Tile64, Cell Processor, Unsniff multicore [/tags]