Speaker
Sebastiano Fabio Schifano
(FE)
Description
More and more often, processor manufacturers adopt the multi-core design
approach as a way to further improve performances in spite of the fact
that current micro-electronic technologies put a practical upper limit
on clock frequency at approximately 3 GHz. A multi-core processor is a
single chip integrating two or more independent CPUs. The number of cores
within one chip is quickly growing: processors with 100 or more cores
are expected in the near future. The many-core approach allows processors
to scale according to Moore's law, but it bears a great impact on application
design, further moving the challenge of sustaining performance from
hardware to algorithms and software.
In this lecture we focus on architecture and programming aspects of recent
developed many- and multi-core processors, analyzing the impact of their
use on physics applications (mostly in theoretical physics but considering
also experimental physics applications). We take into account multi-core
processors based on "traditional" core-architecture such as the Sandybridge,
as well as many-core systems based on GP-GPUs and on the most recent Intel
Xeon-Phi. We also analyze programming strategies to exploit high performance
computing using as test-bed real case physics applications.
