Embedded Systems Design Europe - April 2008 - (Page 6)

news Chip industry confronts ‘software gap’ Through new research, standards and tools, the industry is just starting to address what’s being called a software gap between a rising tide of multicore processors and a lack of parallel programming tools and techniques to make use of them. The gap came into stark focus in the embedded world at the Multicore Expo in Santa Clara, where chip makers Freescale, Intel and MIPS and a handful of silicon startups sketched out directions for their multicore products. Others warned that the industry has its work cut out for it delivering the software that will harness the next-generation chips. “There is a major gap between the hardware and the software,” said Eric Heikkila, director of embedded hardware research at Venture Development Corp. About 55 percent of embedded system developers surveyed by VDC said they are using or will use multicore processors in the next 12 months. That fact is fueling the company’s projections that the market for embedded multicore processors will grow from about $372 million in 2007 to $2.47 billion in 2011. In the PC market, the ﬁgures are even more dramatic. About 40 percent of all processors Intel shipped in 2007 used multiple cores, but that will rise to 95 percent in 2011, said Doug Davis, general manager of Intel’s embedded group. But on the software side, vendors reported that only about 6 percent of their tools were ready for parallel chips in 2007, a ﬁgure that will only rise to 40 percent in 2011, VDC said. As much as 85 percent of all embedded programming is now done in C or C++, languages that are “difﬁcult to optimize for multicore,” said Heikkila. “There’s a need for a short-term ﬁx to make C/C++ more expressive, as well as a long-term solution with new languages and tools,” he said. Changing techniques could be as 6 hard as developing new tools, according believe the frameworks should also serve as a source of information availto Alan Gatherer, chief technology ofﬁcer of the communications infrastruc- able to the compilers and underlying hardware,” he said. ture group at Texas Instruments. “We The university will partner with anare dealing with legacy methodologies other center funded by Microsoft and as much as legacy code,” he said. “If you go to companies such as Er- Intel at the University of California at icsson, they have hundreds of program- Berkeley. “It’s not a competitive situation,” said Hwu. mers writing code in very disciplined Separately, Illinois researchers are ways. So a lot of new software ideas are seeking $10 million to create a nextgoing to have to prove themselves, begeneration parallel processor. Called cause you can’t turn an oil tanker on a Rigel, the chip aims to anticipate future dime,” said Gatherer. many-core processors by extrapolating Michael McCool, chief scientist of directions in today’s general-purpose startup RapidMind, called for a new multicore computer and graphics chips. programming model to help developSanjay Patel, who designed the ers better understand how to optimize physics processor from startup Ageia their applications for parallel chips. Technologies (recently acquired by Such a model would need to automate Nvidia), will lead the as much as possible while giving users “If you really want to chip design. Hwu override options have a million people will lead work on applications for the and drill-down do something, don’t ask chip in areas such as mechanisms, McCool said. them to speak Latin.”. video surveillance. The team has set an “Complexity ambitious goal of [in multicore prodeﬁning a range of chips from a 1-watt gramming] explodes beyond a certain Teraﬂops processor to a 100-W 10point, and that point is fairly low,” he Tﬂops CPU. said. In terms of standards, the MulThe fundamental issues behind creticore Association announced at the ating a mainstream parallel programming model are just starting to come to Expo it has completed work on an applications programming interface for light. “I think we are beginning to see communications between cores, and is where the heads of the monsters are,” said Wen-mei Hwu, a veteran research- now working to deﬁne a standard for embedded virtualization. er in parallel programming and profesObservers praised the efforts and sor of engineering at the University of pointed to related work-in-progress Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. at groups such as the Mobile Industry The university recently won a $10 Processor Interface, OpenMP, Posix million grant from Intel and Microsoft and Power.org. to explore new parallel programming However, experts are still advising techniques. “There is really only room for one model of parallel programming. caution in the area of designing new languages or making major extensions No one can afford to write applications to existing ones to better serve parallel in multiple models,” said Hwu. chips. As co-chair of the university’s new “I believe there will be new lanparallel research center, Hwu said he guage constructs in C/C++ to support wants to build programming framesome of the new frameworks people works to limit variables such as depenwill develop, but even these constructs, dencies in parallel software that create if we are not careful, will not be widely thorny problems for compilers. “We APRIL 2008 | embedded systems design europe | www.embedded.com/europe 006-007_ESDE.indd 6 10/04/08 14:07:24 http://Power.org http://www.embedded.com/europe

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Embedded Systems Design Europe - April 2008 Contents Chip Industry Confronts 'Software' Gap Wind River's VxWorks OS Part of the nEUROn UCAV Demonstrator iSuppli Cuts Electronic Equipment Forecast Study Says GigE Vision Not Mature Chip Aids Wireless Health Monitoring Kontron Reports Strong Financial Growth Xilinx Completes Virtex-5 Line-Up French Project Builds Open Platform Home Automation Group Uses Enocean Radio Layer MIPs Adds Multi-Core Option to Portfolio Cover Feature: Next Gen Programmable Chips: Why Can't Hardware Be More Like Software? Improving Productivity & Quality With Domain-Specific Modeling Efficient CRC Calculation With Minimal Memory Footprint Do-It-Yourself Linux Embedded Development Tools Hardware/Software Verification Enters the Atomic Age New Products Advertising Contacts

Embedded Systems Design Europe - April 2008

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