A SEMINAR REPORT

ON
MULTI CORE PROCESSORS

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the

Award of the Degree
Of

BACHELOR OF TECHNOLOGY

in

ELECTRONICS & COMMUNICATION ENGINEERING

By
K. SAI YASHWANTH (16C31A0474)

BALAJI INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY AND SCIENCE

LAKNAPALLY , MDL. NARSAMPET,DIST. WARANGAL RURAL – 506 331
Accredited by NAAC & ISO 9001:2015 Certified Institution
(Affiliated to JNTU, Hyderabad and approved by the AICTE, New Delhi)

DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRONICS AND COMMUNICATION ENGINEERING

 ABSTRACT

 Seeing the technical difficulties in cranking higher clock speed out of the
present single core processors, multi core architecture has started to establish
itself as the answer to the development of future processors.

 With the release of AMD dual core opteron and Intel Pentium Extreme
edition 840, the month of April 2005 officially marks the beginning of dual
core endeavors for both companies.

 The transition from a single core to dual core architecture was triggered by a
couple of factors. According to Moore's Law, the number of transistors
(complexity) on a microprocessor doubles approximately every 18 months.
The latest 2 MB Prescott core possesses more than 160 million transistors;
breaking the 200 million mark is just a matter of time. Transistor count is
one of the reasons that drive the industry toward the dual core architecture.
Instead of using the available astronomically high transistor counts to design
a new, more complex single core processor that would offer higher
performance than the present offerings, chip makers have decided to put
these transistors to use in producing two identical yet independent cores and
combining them in to a single package.

 To them, this is actually a far better use of the available transistors, and in
return should give the consumers more value for their money. Besides, with
the single core's thermal envelope being pushed to its limit and severe
current leakage issues that have hit the silicon manufacturing industry ever
since the transition to 90 nm chip fabrication, it's extremely difficult for chip
makers (particulary Intel) to squeeze more clock speed out of the present
single core design. Pushing for higher clock speeds is not a feasible option at
present because of transistor current leakage. And adding more features into
the core will increase the complexity of the design and make it harder to
manage. These are the factors that have made the dual core option the more
viable alternative in making full use of the amount of transistors available.
INTRODUCTION :

 A multi-core processor is a computer processor integrated circuit with

two or more separate processing units, called cores, which each read
and execute program instructions, as if the computer had several
processors. The instructions are ordinary CPU instructions (such as
add, move data, and branch) but the single processor can run
instructions on separate cores at the same time, increasing overall
speed for programs that support multithreading or other parallel
computing techniques.

 Manufacturers typically integrate the cores onto a single integrated

circuit die (known as a chip multiprocessor or CMP) or onto multiple
dies in a single chip package. The microprocessors currently used in
almost all personal computers are multi-core. A multi-core processor
implements multiprocessing in a single physical package. Designers
may couple cores in a multi-core device tightly or loosely. For
example, cores may or may not share caches, and they may implement
message passing or shared-memory inter-core communication
methods.

 The improvement in performance gained by the use of a multi-core

processor depends very much on the software algorithms used and
their implementation.Multi-core processors are widely used across
many application domains, including general-purpose, embedded,
network, digital signal processing (DSP), and graphics (GPU).