Hybrid-core computing: Difference between revisions

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'''Hybrid-core''' computing is the technique of extending a commodity [[instruction set architecture]] (e.g. [[x86]]) with application-specific instructions to accelerate application performance. It is a form of [[heterogeneous computing]]<ref>Heterogeneous Processing: a Strategy for Augmenting Moore's Law". Linux Journal 1/2/2006. http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8368</ref> wherein asymmetric computational units coexist with a "commodity" processor.

Hybrid-core processing differs from general heterogeneous computing in that the computational units share a common, cache-coherent logical address space, and an executable is composed of a single instruction stream—in essence a contemporary [[coprocessor]]. The instruction set of a hybrid-core computing system contains instructions that can be dispatched either to the host instruction set or to the application-specific hardware.

Typically, hybrid-core computing is best deployed where the predominance of computational cycles are spent in a few identifiable kernels, as is often seen in [[high-performance computing]] applications. Acceleration is especially pronounced when the kernel’s logic maps poorly to a sequence of commodity processor instructions, and/or maps well to the application-specific hardware.