Fundamentals of Parallel Multicore Architecture

Preface

Starting roughly 10 years ago, the landscape of processor design changed in a significant way. On the surface, nothing major seems to have changed: transistor density kept growing according to Moore’s Law, doubling every 18-24 months. Upon closer inspections, things have changed dramatically. Once growing at the same rate as Moore’s law, the growth in processor clock frequency stalled. Processor manufacturers switched their design en masse from a single core on a die, to multiple cores on a die, popularly known as multicore. The development of these multicore chips marked an important shift in the processor industry. From the physics side, the switch to multicore was motivated by the intolerable power density growth that came from ...