Microprocessor's Developments: From Sand To Artificial Intelligence

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Today, each of us has our own personal computer, but not always we think about how complex and multi-dimensional this thing is. Any kind of the system blocks contains in its main composition a kind of center for all operations and ongoing processes - it's called a microprocessor. From what this indispensable element of each computer consists and what for it is necessary - is quite interesting to know. Probably many of you will be surprised by the fact that the heart of any computer consists of the most common stones, or rather,** rocks**.

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This is actually so. Each microprocessor contains silicon, and this is the material from which sand and even granite rocks consist to a greater extent. It is noteworthy that the first microprocessor for a personal computer was developed almost half a century ago. The author of this project was Marshian Edward Hoff in 1970, as well as his team of researchers from Intel. This processor was rather weak, since it worked at a frequency of 750 kHz. If we compare this microprocessor with modern analogs, then it will significantly lose by its technical characteristics. The fact is that modern microprocessors are thousands of times more powerful and before you look at a new processor for your computer, it would be nice to get acquainted first with what tasks this central element of any PC solves at all.

There is an erroneous opinion that modern processors can think independently and in fact this opinion is mistaken and there is not a fraction of the truth in it. Each modern processor consists of a huge number of transistors - it's a kind of switch. They allow performing only one function - to skip the received signal further or to stop it. What choice will depend solely on the voltage of the incoming pulse.
But what does the microprocessor consist of?

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If you look in more detail at any microprocessor, it will not be difficult to notice that there are numerous registers in its structure that are information processing cells. To connect the "stone" of the processor with the rest of the computer, a high-speed bus is used. It is due to this bus, every second that little electromagnetic signals fly by. It is to this that the principle of action of any microprocessor of a computer or a laptop is reduced.

How is the microprocessor arranged?

Any modern microprocessor has only three basic components:

• The core is precisely in this segment that information is divided into zeros and ones;
• Cache memory is a small information storage medium inside the microprocessor;
• The coprocessor is a unique think tank of any modern computer, where the most complex operations are performed. In this same component of the microprocessor, work with multimedia files takes place.

One of the most important indicators of any microprocessor is its clock speed. It is this parameter that indicates how many cycles the processor can perform for one second. As for the power of the microprocessor, it largely depends on all the parameters mentioned above.

It is noteworthy that relatively recently the launching of rockets and the work of satellites was carried out by microprocessors, whose power was hundreds of times smaller than that of current analogues. Today the size of one transistor is only 22 nm, and the layer of transistors is 1 nm. Recall that 1 nm is the thickness of 5 atoms. Hope that by now you got an idea of how microprocessors of modern computers are actually arranged. As you can see, scientists managed to achieve considerable success, as evidenced by modern computers.

A powerful processor for artificial intelligence

It is not so long left to wait for the day when cars can rebel against humanity, as a team of scientists from the Massachusetts Institute has completed work on a processor that can accelerate the process of processing information, as well as recognizing images through neutron networks. This development is unique in its way, because thanks to it, sooner, electronic mechanisms will be able to independently think and make informed decisions. Every year, work on artificial intelligence is increasingly surprised by mankind and there is no doubt that it will soon be able to develop to such a scale, which we are accustomed to hearing only from fantastic films.

The innovative processor was named Eyeriss, and its presentation took place as part of an international conference in San Francisco. This innovative processor was first designed and created solely to simplify the process of in-depth training. The creators of Eyeriss have made sure that their "brainchild" can process information several times faster than many modern GPUs. It is noteworthy that in the near future this technology can be successfully adapted for portable devices, for example, tablets or smartphones.

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Developers pay attention that the use of the process of in-depth training can be very important for different spheres. The algorithm created by them, or rather their complex, is able to recognize speech, people's faces and objects of complex shape. It is noteworthy that all modern neural networks are complex, so they can work effectively only in combination with powerful GPUs. While it is not difficult to imagine that all this functionality can be integrated into smartphones and other devices in the near future.

A significant increase in the rate of processing of information was achieved exclusively due to the unusual design of the processor. Here, the developers moved away from the traditional methods of creating processors and did not use a common pool of memory. Eyeriss has 168 cores, and each of them has its own cache memory. It is this approach that made it possible to get rid of the irrational data transfer within the system. In addition, the speed of data processing was also affected by the fact that the processor initially compresses the data by means of a special circuit, and after the transfer, it unpacks them at the destination.

Note that the innovative Eyeriss processor works on the basis of an innovative scheme that allows you to configure the processing of data in such a way that it is located between the cores most rationally. With a uniform load distribution on the processor, a significant increase in the processing speed of information was achieved. It will be interesting to see how innovative Eyeriss processor is planned to be used effectively in future.

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Bibliography:

Multibus
Microprocessor
Microprocessor History
How Microprocessors Work