Memory-Intensive Applications on a Many-Core Processor

Future micro-processors are expected to contain an increasing number of cores. Different models exist for efficiently organizing the cores of the resulting many-core processors. The Single-Chip Cloud Computer (SCC) is an experimental processor created by Intel Labs. It is optimized for providing to each core a programming model similar to that of the nodes of a message-passing distributed system. We have examined the performance of a memory-intensive application on the SCC. The application solves Initial Value Problems (IVPs) of Ordinary Differential Equations (ODEs). Experiments with different configurations and optimizations of this application have been performed. The evaluation of these experiments reveals bottlenecks and provides hints for optimizing applications for similar many-core architectures.