ANNOUNCEMENTS

Supercomputing To Go
HPEC Raises its Head at SC|05

Most of us think of embedded computers as smaller, slower, more efficient cousins of conventional, commodity, general-purpose computing hardware. Since most embedded systems designers are trying to cram capable computers into tiny form-factors with miserly power budgets, we find ways to compromise on capabilities like available memory, I/O bandwidth, processor speed, and software robustness. We cut down our expectations so we can squeeze into handhelds and mobile platforms, content with delivering our computing power directly where it’s needed instead of inside a desktop box or briefcase.

Some embedded applications are much tougher, however. There are cases when we need to deliver copious amounts of computing power while remaining off the grid. Last week, at Supercomputing 2005 in Seattle, there was ample evidence of just such compute power gone mad. Gigantic racks of powerful processors pumped piles of data through blazing fast networks and onto enormous storage farms. The feel of the place was about as far from “embedded” as you can get, unless your idea of embedding somehow involves giant air-conditioners and 3-phase power.

Behind the huge storage clouds, teraflop racks, and nation-sized networks, there was considerable embedded computing activity going on, however. Although not its main event, high-performance embedded computing (HPEC) was hanging out at the show and getting a good deal of quiet attention. It seems that not all of life’s difficult problems will hold still long enough for you to ship them off to a supercomputer facility. Sometimes, massive processing power is required to interpret images in real-time, process radio signals on the fly, or solve complicated algorithms from inside a moving vehicle. It’s those applications that put the “E” in HPEC, and several forward-thinking companies were at the show, working to help the rest of us see the light.

To briefly trace the history of embedded systems architectures, we have moved rapidly from systems-in-chassis to systems-on-board, then into system-on-chip (SoC) integration over the past decade. Each time we’ve integrated, our power density has increased as our form factors shrank. Interestingly, today, embedded systems have more in common with supercomputers than with commodity desktop and laptop machines. As we highlighted last week in “Changing Waves,” both supercomputers and embedded computers have hit the wall of diminishing returns on single-thread, Von Neumann processors and have moved into the domain of multi-core and alternative architecture processing. [more]

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