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Finnish startup Flow Computing promises a kind of revolution in the field of computer computing. He claims that by adding his companion chip, any CPU can instantly double its performance, and with software tweaks and optimizations, efficiency increases up to 100 times.
Flow is a division of the Finnish research organization VTT, which is similar to a national laboratory. The chip technology, which it is commercializing under the Parallel Processing Unit brand, is the result of research conducted in this laboratory (although VTT is an investor, the intellectual property belongs to Flow).
While CPUs have come a long way in their evolution, they still haven’t changed in some fundamental ways. Their main limitation is that, as serial rather than parallel processors, they can only do one thing at a time. While modern CPUs can quickly distribute tasks across multiple cores and threads, these are all ways to accommodate the single-lane nature of CPUs. GPUs, by contrast, perform many related calculations at once, but specialize in certain operations.
“The CPU is the weakest link in computing,” said Flow co-founder and CEO Timo Valtonen. “It’s not fit for purpose, and that’s going to have to change.”
Processors have become very fast, but still do not execute instructions optimally due to a basic limitation – simply put, one task must complete before the next one can begin. Flow claims to have eliminated this limitation by transforming CPU from a single-lane street into a multi-lane highway. The CPU is still limited to executing one task at a time, but PPU Flow essentially performs nanosecond-scale traffic management functions on-chip to move tasks in and out of the processor faster than was previously possible. The PPU does not increase clock speed or otherwise push the system, which could result in additional power consumption and heat generation. It just makes more efficient use of the CPU cycles that are already happening.
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What’s important is that there is no need to change the code or architecture for the PPU to work effectively. In fact, any code can be executed in half the time on any chip without any modifications other than integrating the PPU with the die.
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So, unlike a software product, Flow technology must be integrated at the chip architecture design level. That is, it does not work retroactively with any processor. Flow has shown that its technology works in FPGA-based test systems, but chip makers would have to devote quite a lot of resources to see the benefits it claims. Although, if, without significant architectural changes, processor manufacturers can double the performance of their CPUs simply by implementing minor changes to the chip, this should be a significant incentive for such work.
Further performance gains are provided by refactoring and recompiling the software to better work with the PPU-CPU combination. Flow says it has seen increases of up to 100 times thanks to code that has been modified (though not necessarily completely rewritten) to take advantage of its technology. The company is working on offering recompilation tools to make this task easier for software developers who want to optimize their products for Flow-enabled chips.
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