Intel Patents 'Software Defined Supercore'

Summary

Intel has patented a technology it calls 'Software Defined Supercore' (SDC) that enables software to fuse the capabilities of multiple cores to assemble a virtual ultra-wide 'supercore' capable of improving single-thread performance, provided that it has enough parallel work. If the technology works as it is designed to, then Intel's future CPUs could offer an single-thread performance in select applications that can use SDC. For now this is just a patent which may, or may not become a reality.Intel's Software Defined Supercore (SDC) technologies combine two or more physical CPU cores to cooperate as a single high-performance virtual core by dividing a single thread's instructions into separate blocks and executing them in parallel. Each core runs a distinct portion of the program, while specialized sync and data-transfer instructions ensure the original program order is preserved to maximize instructions per clock (IPC) with minimal overhead. This approach is designed to improve single-thread performance without increasing clock speeds or building wide monolithic cores, which increases power consumption and/or transistor budgets.Modern x86 CPU cores can decode 4 – 6 instructions and then execute 8 - 9 micro-ops per cycle after instructions are decoded into micro-ops, which is peak IPC performance for such processors. By contrast, Apple's custom Arm-based high-performance cores (e.g., Firestorm, Avalanche, Everest) can decode up to 8 instructions per cycle and then execute over 10 instructions per cycle under ideal conditions, which is why Apple's processors typically offer significantly higher single-threaded performance and at lower power compared to Arm counterparts.While it is technically possible to build an 8-way x86 CPU core (i.e., a superscalar x86 processor that can decode, issue, and retire up to 8 instructions per clock), but in practice, it has not been done because of front-end bottlenecks as well as diminishing returns in terms of performance increase ...