A long time ago there was talk about something called reversed hyperthreading from AMD, which would simply be a way for multi-core processors to “act as a single core processor.” This would improve performance in single-threaded applications with multi-core processors. This isn’t entirely unlike that, although not exactly the same, but we have a hunch the previous rumors emerged from the same project. Programming for multi-core processors has always been a complex and painful task, but with the latest generations of processors it has become more and more common to do so. AMD’s new Light-Weight Profiling (LWP) technology will hopefully change this.
LWP namely makes it possible for the processor self to decide how to execute the code. AMD says that the LWP technology will make it possible for the processor to make real-time decisions on how to execute concurrently running code. LWP will be a set of hardware features in future microprocessors from AMD, including a new memory organization.
Real-time parallelization in the shape of hardware is certainly an interesting advancement that should remedy at least some of the tedious work of programming multi-threaded applications. Worst case scenario it “only” ensures a performance scaling of single-threaded applications on multi-core processors, according to how many cores there are of course.
