Who Ordered Memory Fences on an x86?

[Nick Sabalausky]

"BCS" <ao at pathlink.com> wrote in message 
news:78ccfa2d350718cb0e1e3ffdd376 at news.digitalmars.com...
> Reply to Nick,
>
>
>> Yea, I've been hearing a lot about that. Be interesting to see what
>> happens. Console gaming will probably be the best place to watch to
>> see how that turns out (what with Sony's Cell and all).
>>
>> Also, a few years ago I heard about some research on a "smart memory"
>> chip that would allow certain basic operations to be performed within
>> the memory chip itself (basically turning the memory cells into
>> registers, AIUI). IIRC, the benefit they were aiming for was reducing
>> the bottleneck of CPU<->RAM bus traffic. I haven't heard anything
>> about it since then, but between that and the "lots of simple CPU
>> cores" predictions, I wouldn't be surprised (though I'm not sure I
>> would bet on it either) to eventually see traditional memory and
>> processors (and maybe even hard drives) become replaced by a hybrid
>> "CPU/RAM" chip.
>>
>
> One option people are throwing around in this is the Field Programmable 
> Processor Array, think a FPGA with more complex gates.

Oh yes, the processor that can rewire itself on-the-fly. A very interesting 
idea.