| Hi-index | 4.10 |
Chip architects from Sun, Cyrix, Motorola, Mips, Intel, and Digital see challenges rather than walls in micro-processor design. They share their in-sights in this virtual roundtable. IntroductionIn "Increasing Work, Pushing the Clock," Mark Tremblay discusses the conflicting goals of improving how much work a processor does per cycle and at the same time shortening the cycle time.In "Reining in Complexity," Greg Grohoski says we need to reduce the processor complexity to spend less time debugging that complexity. In "Specialization: A Way of Life," Brad Burgess thinks tightly interwoven designs will better support focused applications. In "Challenges, Not Roadblocks," Earl Killian is confident the industry will solve foreseeable problems. He sees "big data" problems as key design drivers. In "Maintaining a Leading Position," Robert Colwell sees a convergence of factors that make validation a big concern. He foresees future computers as communication enhancement devices. In "Managing Problems at High Speed," Paul I. Rubinfeld names five issues as important to processor design and discusses some challenges specific to high-speed processor design.Despite the competitiveness of their field, these six architects shared several insights of interest to those not intimately connected with processor design. This virtual roundtable concludes by highlighting a technology trend we should hear more about in 1998. In "Introduction to Predication," Wen-mei Hwu explains the technique that is a major change embodied in Intel's next-generation, 64-bit architecture.