Researchers boost multi-core CPU performance with better prefetching
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/26/researchers-boost-multi-core-cpu-performance-with-better-prefetc/
Piling on cores is one way to boost performance, but it's not necessarily the most efficient way -- researchers at North Carolina State University have developed a new prefetching technique for processors that could boost performance by up to 40-percent. As you may know, any data not stored in a CPU's cache must be pulled from RAM, but as more cores are added they can create a bottleneck by competing for memory access. To counter this designers use prefetching to predict what information will be needed and grab it ahead of time, but guessing wrong can hurt performance. Researchers tackled this problem from two fronts: first, by creating a better algorithm for divvying up bandwidth, and second, by selectively turning off prefetching when it might slow the CPU. Full PR and an abstract of the study being published June 9th are after the break.Continue reading Researchers boost multi-core CPU performance with better prefetching
Researchers boost multi-core CPU performance with better prefetching originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 May 2011 18:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink ! ; |
North Carolina State University | Email this | Comments
Next Meeting is probably the single most useful experimental feature in Calendar, because it shows you exactly what event is coming up next, along with a clearly readable countdown timer so you don't miss it. It shows up as a widget in the sidebar, and the event displayed in the widget is highlighted the same color as the calendar set that it came from.
This feature allows you to quickly jump straight to any date in the past or future, without a flux capacitor. Not only is it great for jumping back to check what events happened on past dates, but enabling it along with the Year View feature (below) is a great way to get a handle on long-term planning.
This feature adds a simple, minimal world clock to the sidebar, and you get to pick and choose which cities to include in the list. It's especially useful for people trying to schedule events with co-workers who are located globally, and even better, it displays cities with dark backgrounds if it happens to be night time in their time zones.
This feature only applies to events that are slated for a specific time period, not a whole day. If there are recurring events scheduled for the same day as a one-off item, they'll dim slightly to make the slightly more important event stand out. Pretty useful if you've got a packed schedule and you're trying to skim through it for appointments.
Gentle Reminders was 
Calendar already offers an option to list yourself as busy during events, but that won't stop people from inviting you to anything and everything while you're gone. This feature handles those invites for you by simply declining each and every one if you tell it to do so.
Sharing calendars with friends or co-workers is great, but it only shares the events. This feature allows you to upload attachments to any event you want, and even grabs items from other Google services. The only catch is that if you're sharing something from Docs, you'll still have to actually set the doc itself to share, too.
MicroSDs are cute and so incredibly useful. Kingmax, a Taiwanese company, is making them even more useful by bumping the size up to 64GB. It's the world's first 64GB microSD card.
Posts
