14 DAY TRIAL // The latest advances in the microprocessors industry have allowed manufacturers to design and produce chips that feature more than one core. In terms of power efficiency and processing power, this step marks the end of single-core CPUs and permits IT makers to reach new levels of performance and speed. The benefits of the new technology are not a secret to anyone, yet the spreading of multi-core processors is not going as well as believed. The reason is quite simple: software developers are not able to keep up with creating applications that will scale to more than one core.
The IT industry finds itself in the middle of a rather inconvenient situation. On the one hand, chip makers are pushing the technology towards the manufacturing of microprocessor with six, eight, twelve or even more cores; on the other hand, they lack the adequate software that will take full advantage of the technology. This situation is due to the fact that most software developers used to create programs for single core processors and they need both time and money to start developing multithreaded applications.
“We have a serious developer problem. People just don't know how to develop for multicores,” said Rob Enderle, an analyst at Enderle Group in San Jose. He added that “the environment has been single-threaded for so long that developers really haven't developed the skills. It's difficult to take things apart, make them run separately and then have them come together perfectly at the end”.
Microprocessor manufacturers continue to deliver multi-core devices and will do so in the future as well. Intel unveiled earlier this month its six-core Xeon 7400 server processor series. Quad-core CPUs are a common thing today, and the limit is being pushed even further. Intel plans to release an eight-core version of its Nehalem chips next year. Quad-core Nehalems are expected to come to the market by the end of 2008.
Intel's rival, Advanced Micro Devices, is a little bit behind with the multi-core technology, yet the Sunnyvale company announced a six-core Istanbul server processor for the second half of 2009 and a 12-core server processor to launch in the first half of 2010. Another industry player, IBM, also developed an eight-core Cell chip, together with Sony Corp. and Toshiba Corp. IBM's processor is meant to run large computations on Sony's PlayStation 3 video game system.
While the news about these multi-core processors has been on the loose for quite some time and we've become accustomed to it, there is another project on which little is known. Intel announced at the beginning of 2007 that it is working on a chip that would feature 80 cores. The company didn't say it actually plans to build the chip, yet analysts think that this is the future, and that it may not be too far way.
Adequate software can boost 300 percent performance out of a quad-core processor
“You know, at this point, everyone knows we're going to go up with the multicores: quads to six, to eight, to 12 cores,” said Jim McGregor, an analyst at In-Stat in Scottsdale, Ariz. “The road maps are out there for multiple cores,” and IT managers can start to make plans on taking full advantage of the technology, he noted. “We know the track the technology is taking. This is an evolutionary cycle.” According to him, 16-core chips should arrive in 18 or 24 months, since the number of cores doubles every two years.
Data-center owners can only benefit from purchasing multi-core processors. More cores mean more power, which means a lot in performance and power efficiency. The solution for having the multi-core server machines delivering the amount of performance they are expected to is virtualization. This way, each core is assigned with its own virtual machine and runs separate applications.
According to Bruce McMillan, manager of emerging technologies at the U.S. division of Solvay Pharmaceuticals Inc. in Marietta, Ga., virtualization is a great solution. He said that, while cutting the number of physical servers in his data-center by almost a half, he also managed to increase the number of virtual machines by 50 percent. McMillan added that he used to run 100 virtual machines on eight single core servers. He managed to scale to 150 virtual machines while adding only two dual-core servers.
McMillan also said that a quad-core server had been installed about a month ago in the data-center, which allowed him to shut-down three single-cores. He explained that the company plans to install two more quad-cores and retire all single-cores this way. “It's saved me $500,000 just in hardware costs” so far, he revealed. “I can have much higher consolidation ratios than I had before.”
“It's a new level of scalability,” McMillan added. “It's enabled us to really reduce our footprint in the data center. It's reduced our cooling costs. It's giving us less physical servers to manage. The maintenance contracts are cheaper. We're using fewer network portals because we have fewer machines.”
There is still the problem of lacking multithreaded software that will make multi-core machines run to the full. Dykstra, co-founder and a senior partner at Jones Dykstr & Associates in Columbia, Md. said that “It's really disappointing when you fire up a quad-core and then you see it's really only running on one core. All that extra money and expense, and you're not really getting a boost in speed”. While today only one core of a quad-core chip is used to run software, taking advantage of all the cores would deliver performance boost by 300 percent, said Dykstra. Also, data would be processed and sent out to customers more quickly this way, he added. “That's why we go to vendors and harangue them to do better.”
According to Margaret Lewis, director of commercial solutions at AMD, we should see advances in multithreaded software in about five years. Even so, companies running applications that have been internally developed won't benefit too much from this. In such cases, the software will have to be either replaced or rewritten from the beginning.
The current volatile economy is another obstacle to companies, as they need to prove strong business benefits before building or buying new technologies, said Joanne Kossuth, vice president of operations and CIO at the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering in Needham, Mass. “In the economic arena we're in right now, cost is critical,” Joanne Kossuth revealed. She added, “How much will those 12 cores cost, and then what am I going to not be able to do? Will I be able to get rid of servers? Will I be able to consolidate?”
According to her, “We can't just ask for the new toys anymore. There has to be a business application for them”.