Re:Intel Previews Sierra Forest with 288 E-Cores, Announces ...
by nickpsecurity on Monday March 04, 2024 @03:06PM
(#39595295)
The main uses I’ve seen for extra, light cores are redundancy against hardware failures, physical isolation, and I/O coprocessors. (Other than strictly using them for low-power operation that is.)
For redundancy like NonStop pairs or secure decomposition, the IPC must be really fast so they can work in lockstep or pipelines.
For I/O processors, the efficient one can handle interrupt processing while the performance core focuses on main application. Like in a mainframe with the hardware more condensed.
A separate socket per logical domain with its IPC overhead might not be as cost-efficient as heterogenous CPU’s. That’s also before I consider putting the new chips in existing, low-cost servers with all servers having the same chips. That might have cost and management benefits on top of it.
For redundancy like NonStop pairs or secure decomposition, the IPC must be really fast so they can work in lockstep or pipelines.
For I/O processors, the efficient one can handle interrupt processing while the performance core focuses on main application. Like in a mainframe with the hardware more condensed.
A separate socket per logical domain with its IPC overhead might not be as cost-efficient as heterogenous CPU’s. That’s also before I consider putting the new chips in existing, low-cost servers with all servers having the same chips. That might have cost and management benefits on top of it.