Hardware Trends

Contents Memory Hard Disks Processors Network Accessories Future

Memory DDR 3 Released in v Power Consumption – DDR2 -> 1.8v – DDR -> 2.25v Peak Transfer Rate: – 2 x 10 6 transfer/s Normal Transfer Rate: – ~(0.8 to 1.2) x 10 6 transfer/s NOT backwards compatible. 8 GB Chip Capacity 16 GB Module Capacity DDR 4 Expected 2015 release 1.2v Power Consumption Peak Transfer Rate: – ~4 x 10 6 transfer/s Normal Transfer Rate: – ~2 x 10 6 transfer/s Not backwards compatible with previous versions Expected 16 GB Chip Capacity. Expected 32 GB Module Capacity.

Contents Memory Hard Disks Processors Network Accessories Future

Hard Drives Current High Speed Interfaces: – SATA (Serial ATA) – SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) Current Capacity: 2TB Time to read (seek): – 1956: 0.1 sec – Now: sec Random Access Time: – Between 1 and 5 seconds – Between 5 and 10 ms Price: – 1956: $15,000 / MB – Now: $100 / TB Size: – 1956: 8 in. – Now: 2.5 in.

Hard Drives New: SSD (Solid State Drives) – Positives Flash Based rather than mechanical. Lower Power / less voltage – Current max capacity: currently up to 512 GB – Time to read: < 0.1 ms – Size: 1.8 inch – No Seek Times – No slowdown to fragmentation. – No acoustics. – No data loss to shock. – Controllers can read AND write asynchronously. – Very low power consumption.

Hard Drives Negatives: – Price: $1.20 to $2.00 per GB – Size: typically 512 GB or less – Typically slower writes than reads – Flash models are “write limited” Can only write to same sector of flash memory limited number of times before that sector becomes unusable. All drives contain a special controller that minimizes this problem! Trends: – 2 year trend: 50% price decrease 200% capacity increase

Contents Memory Hard Disks Processors Network Accessories Future

Processors Old and Busted? – Single core processors Pentium IV Extreme Edition – Max spd: 3.73 GHz – Clock rate: 1066 MHz – L1 & L2 cache for instruction pre-fetch – Fastest single core processor ever created.

Processors New and shiny: – Multi-core processors / Many-core processors Why? – Multiple CPU cores per chip Dual (2) Quad (4) Hexa (6) Octa (8) Dodeca (12) Slower cores used in chips. – Typically < 2.6 GHz Performance dependant on software! Processors – Have own L1 cache – Share L2 and L3 cache

Processors Intel Core i7 (“Nehalem” architecture) – 4 cores – 1 MB L2 cache | 8 MB L3 cache – 2 x DDR3 RAM bus –.65 to 1.4 V – 731 x 10 6 transistors

Processors Why do my programs run slower on multi-core processors? – Software doesn’t care about the underlying architecture. – Most software is single-threaded (especially legacy applications)

Contents Memory Hard Disks Processors Network Accessories Future

Network Current: 1GB Ethernet – Less used: Myricom / Infiniband Proprietary interfaces and cables Up to 80GB/s transfer speed New: – 100 GB switch demonstrated by Cisco in 2008 – 100 GB NIC demonstrated in June 2009 – January 2011: Lucent introduced 100 GB Ethernet interfaces that support current broadband technology.

Contents Memory Hard Disks Processors Network Accessories Future

Accessories USB 2.x Throughput: – 35 to 40 MB/s Max cable length: – 16.4 ft Half-duplex – Only 1 operation at a time (read/write) USB 3.0 Throughput: – Tested ~100 MB/s Max cable length: – 9.8 ft. Bi-directional traffic Signaling rate: 625 MB/s Increased Power over USB for devices. Max # devices: 127

Accessories Future: – Intel (Light Peak) – Optical Cabling – 10 GB/s bi-directional data transfer – Handles multiple communication protocols USB Video Firewire Etc… – Testing 100 GB/s protocols & devices – 1 st adopters: Apple for new iMacs

Contents Memory Hard Disks Processors Network Accessories Future

Future??? Predictions: – Power requirements for PCs will continue to decline. – Processing throughput and storage speed discrepancy will continue to widen – Increase in distributed computing: More netbooks Fewer servers Faster interfaces “Slower” processors but more computational throughput – Software vendors: Increase software parallelization

Future??? – SSDs will begin to replace SATA/SAS – Teaching trends? Parallel computing Software parallelization – Compilers: Parallel optimizations for software