News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on ARM-based MacBook Air test sample spied. Parent comment

Re:ARM-based MacBook Air test sample spied by Jeema3000 on Sunday May 29, 2011 @03:06PM (#2597264)
It's certainly possible I think, but what you're talking about is more-or-less asymmetric multiprocessing, which (according to Wikipedia at least) is generally more complicated to implement at a hardware level:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symmetric_multiprocessing#Alter...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:ARM-based MacBook Air test sample spied by mmastrac on Sunday May 29, 2011 @03:11PM (#2597278)
Exactly, this is just an asymmetric MP configuration. Note that this isn't exactly groundbreaking either. Others have already been using QPI to hook FPGAs up as accelerators. I don't doubt that it's a complicated technical endeavour, but Apple is certainly home to a number of talented engineers:

http://www.nallatech.com/Latest-News/xilinx-demonstrates-int...

http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4207772/Xilinx-demos...

[ Parent | on HN ]