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Data-oriented Design
In computing, data-oriented design is a program optimization approach motivated by efficient usage of the CPU cache, used in video game development. The approach is to focus on the data layout, separating and sorting fields according to when they are needed, and to think about transformations of data. Proponents include Mike Acton, Scott Meyers, and Jonathan Blow. The parallel array (or structure of arrays) is the main example of data-oriented design. It is contrasted with the ''array of structures'' typical of object-oriented designs. Motives These methods became especially popular in the mid to late 2000s during the seventh generation of video game consoles that included the IBM PowerPC based PlayStation 3 (PS3) and Xbox 360 consoles. Historically, game consoles often have relatively weak central processing units (CPUs) compared to the top-of-line desktop computer counterparts. This is a design choice to devote more power and transistor budget to the graphics processing un ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Computing
Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and development of both hardware and software. Computing has scientific, engineering, mathematical, technological and social aspects. Major computing disciplines include computer engineering, computer science, cybersecurity, data science, information systems, information technology and software engineering. The term "computing" is also synonymous with counting and calculating. In earlier times, it was used in reference to the action performed by mechanical computing machines, and before that, to human computers. History The history of computing is longer than the history of computing hardware and includes the history of methods intended for pen and paper (or for chalk and slate) with or without the aid of tables. Computing is intimately tied to the representation of numbers, though mathematical conc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Graphics Processing Unit
A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed to manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display device. GPUs are used in embedded systems, mobile phones, personal computers, workstations, and game consoles. Modern GPUs are efficient at manipulating computer graphics and image processing. Their parallel structure makes them more efficient than general-purpose central processing units (CPUs) for algorithms that process large blocks of data in parallel. In a personal computer, a GPU can be present on a video card or embedded on the motherboard. In some CPUs, they are embedded on the CPU die. In the 1970s, the term "GPU" originally stood for ''graphics processor unit'' and described a programmable processing unit independently working from the CPU and responsible for graphics manipulation and output. Later, in 1994, Sony used the term (now standing for ''graphics processing unit'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Loop Unrolling
Loop unrolling, also known as loop unwinding, is a loop transformation technique that attempts to optimize a program's execution speed at the expense of its binary size, which is an approach known as space–time tradeoff. The transformation can be undertaken manually by the programmer or by an optimizing compiler. On modern processors, loop unrolling is often counterproductive, as the increased code size can cause more cache misses; ''cf.'' Duff's device. The goal of loop unwinding is to increase a program's speed by reducing or eliminating instructions that control the loop, such as pointer arithmetic and "end of loop" tests on each iteration; reducing branch penalties; as well as hiding latencies, including the delay in reading data from memory. To eliminate this computational overhead, loops can be re-written as a repeated sequence of similar independent statements. Loop unrolling is also part of certain formal verification techniques, in particular bounded model checking. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Itanium
Itanium ( ) is a discontinued family of 64-bit Intel microprocessors that implement the Intel Itanium architecture (formerly called IA-64). Launched in June 2001, Intel marketed the processors for enterprise servers and high-performance computing systems. The Itanium architecture originated at Hewlett-Packard (HP), and was later jointly developed by HP and Intel. Itanium-based systems were produced by HP/Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) (the HPE Integrity Servers line) and several other manufacturers. In 2008, Itanium was the fourth-most deployed microprocessor architecture for enterprise-class systems, behind x86-64, Power ISA, and SPARC. In February 2017, Intel released the final generation, Kittson, to test customers, and in May began shipping in volume. It was used exclusively in mission-critical servers from Hewlett Packard Enterprise. In 2019, Intel announced that new orders for Itanium would be accepted until January 30, 2020, and shipments would cease by July 29, 2021 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Memory Access Pattern
In computing, a memory access pattern or IO access pattern is the pattern with which a system or program reads and writes memory on secondary storage. These patterns differ in the level of locality of reference and drastically affect cache performance, and also have implications for the approach to parallelism and distribution of workload in shared memory systems. Further, cache coherency issues can affect multiprocessor performance, which means that certain memory access patterns place a ceiling on parallelism (which manycore approaches seek to break). Computer memory is usually described as "random access", but traversals by software will still exhibit patterns that can be exploited for efficiency. Various tools exist to help system designers and programmers understand, analyse and improve the memory access pattern, including VTune and Vectorization Advisor, including tools to address GPU memory access patterns Memory access patterns also have implications for security, which ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Locality Of Reference
In computer science, locality of reference, also known as the principle of locality, is the tendency of a processor to access the same set of memory locations repetitively over a short period of time. There are two basic types of reference locality temporal and spatial locality. Temporal locality refers to the reuse of specific data and/or resources within a relatively small time duration. Spatial locality (also termed ''data locality''"NIST Big Data Interoperability Framework: Volume 1"urn:doi:10.6028/NIST.SP.1500-1r2) refers to the use of data elements within relatively close storage locations. Sequential locality, a special case of spatial locality, occurs when data elements are arranged and accessed linearly, such as traversing the elements in a one-dimensional Array data structure, array. Locality is a type of predictability, predictable behavior that occurs in computer systems. Systems that exhibit strong ''locality of reference'' are great candidates for performance optimiza ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Von Neumann Architecture
The von Neumann architecture — also known as the von Neumann model or Princeton architecture — is a computer architecture based on a 1945 description by John von Neumann, and by others, in the ''First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC''. The document describes a design architecture for an electronic digital computer with these components: * A processing unit with both an arithmetic logic unit and processor registers * A control unit that includes an instruction register and a program counter * Memory that stores data and instructions * External mass storage * Input and output mechanisms.. The term "von Neumann architecture" has evolved to refer to any stored-program computer in which an instruction fetch and a data operation cannot occur at the same time (since they share a common bus). This is referred to as the von Neumann bottleneck, which often limits the performance of the corresponding system. The design of a von Neumann architecture machine is simpler than in a Harva ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
System Bus
A system bus is a single computer bus that connects the major components of a computer system, combining the functions of a data bus to carry information, an address bus to determine where it should be sent or read from, and a control bus to determine its operation. The technique was developed to reduce costs and improve modularity, and although popular in the 1970s and 1980s, more modern computers use a variety of separate buses adapted to more specific needs. The system level bus (as distinct from a CPU's internal datapath busses) connects the CPU to memory and I/O devices. Typically a system level bus is designed for use as a backplane. Background scenario Many of the computers were based on the ''First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC'' report published in 1945. In what became known as the Von Neumann architecture, a central control unit and arithmetic logic unit (ALU, which he called the central arithmetic part) were combined with computer memory and input and output functio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cache Misses
In computing, a cache ( ) is a hardware or software component that stores data so that future requests for that data can be served faster; the data stored in a cache might be the result of an earlier computation or a copy of data stored elsewhere. A ''cache hit'' occurs when the requested data can be found in a cache, while a ''cache miss'' occurs when it cannot. Cache hits are served by reading data from the cache, which is faster than recomputing a result or reading from a slower data store; thus, the more requests that can be served from the cache, the faster the system performs. To be cost-effective and to enable efficient use of data, caches must be relatively small. Nevertheless, caches have proven themselves in many areas of computing, because typical computer applications access data with a high degree of locality of reference. Such access patterns exhibit temporal locality, where data is requested that has been recently requested already, and spatial locality, where d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
