> > Re: having a specialized, low-power core, this is clearly something that's > already been successful in the mobile device space. The big.LITTLE > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_big.LITTLE> ARM architecture is > designed for this kind of thing and has been quite successful. Certainly, > now that Intel and AMD are really designing modular SoC-like products, it > wouldn't be terribly difficult to bake in a couple of low power x86 cores > (e.g. Atom or Xeon-D + larger Skylake die in Intel's case; Jaguar + Zen in > AMD's case). I'm not an expert in fab economics, but I don't believe it > would not significantly add to production costs. >
The "textbook" answer to integrated circuit manufacturing is that there need be no dependence of device cost on number of gates/device complexity. Fundamentally, you're just printing/etching a slightly more complicated mask on a circuit board. The number of gates and the probability of defects are probably proportional - didn't AMD sell 6 and 3 core processors for a while? I always assumed those were 4 or 8 core procs that had critical defects in one of the cores. Sorry, no first-hand knowledge though. Jim Lux probably knows the real answer. Nathan
_______________________________________________ Beowulf mailing list, Beowulf@beowulf.org sponsored by Penguin Computing To change your subscription (digest mode or unsubscribe) visit http://www.beowulf.org/mailman/listinfo/beowulf
