1. Hardware Trends

2. Contents Memory Hard Disks Processors Network Accessories Future

3. Memory DDR 3 Released in 2007 1.5 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.

4. Contents Memory Hard Disks Processors Network Accessories Future

5. 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: 0.003 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.

6. 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.

7. 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

8. Contents Memory Hard Disks Processors Network Accessories Future

9. 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.

10. 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

11. 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

12. 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)

13. Contents Memory Hard Disks Processors Network Accessories Future

14. 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.

15. Contents Memory Hard Disks Processors Network Accessories Future

16. 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

17. 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

18. Contents Memory Hard Disks Processors Network Accessories Future

19. 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

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