Talk:POWER4

First non-embedded multicore processor

I was trying to go down the rabbit hole behind that statement. The qualifier "non-embedded" was added in 2009 with the comment "Clarify - several embedded MPUs were multicore, but the POWER4 was the first high performance CMP and CAAQA should verify this...". I think CAAQA is the book "Computer Architecture A Quantitative Approach", and I assume CMP is "chip multi processor". I was wondering if there was a specific first embedded multicore processor. My conclusion is that the title depends on the exact definition of the term, and it's a bit futile. This link has some good examples of early devices that fit various definitions: https://retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/30743/what-was-the-first-multi-core-cpu

I found a research paper from 1996 that argues for building a multicore chip https://www.ece.ucdavis.edu/~akella/270W05/reading/p2-olukotun.pdf, a conference entry from 1999 referencing a four core chip https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/824067. There are also some papers from 2002 talking about a Multi Micro Processor (MμP), for example https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1115361, but I can't find any implementation of that concept. There's another conference article for a multicore chip in the embedded area https://www.computer.org/csdl/proceedings-article/iccima/2003/19570015/12OmNxGSm7h 194.39.218.21 (talk) 16:28, 6 March 2025 (UTC)