Feb 9, 2009

More chip cores can mean slower supercomputing

The worldwide attempt to increase the speed of supercomputers merely by increasing the number of processor cores on individual chips unexpectedly worsens performance for many complex applications, Sandia simulations have found.

A Sandia team simulated key algorithms for deriving knowledge from large data sets. The simulations show a significant increase in speed going from two to four multicores, but an insignificant increase from four to eight multicores. Exceeding eight multicores causes a decrease in speed. Sixteen multicores perform barely as well as two, and after that, a steep decline is registered as more cores are added.

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