Flow Computing Podcast Series: Prof. Dr. Jörg Keller on PPU Technology (Episode 1: Introduction to PPU Technology)

In this episode, Professor Dr. Jörg Keller introduces the concept of Flow Computing's Parallel Processing Unit (PPU) and how it differs from traditional multi-core processors. Professor Keller highlights the limitations of current CPUs with independent cores and the overhead they incur when executing parallelizable code.

The PPU addresses these limitations by having a set of cores that work in unison, significantly reducing overhead and enabling efficient parallelization. Additionally, PPU cores are smaller and consume less power than traditional CPU cores, further enhancing their appeal.

This first episode lays the groundwork for understanding the unique advantages of the PPU and sets the stage for deeper exploration into its performance gains, use cases, adaptability, and impact on the future of computing in the upcoming episodes.

Transcript

ANTTI MÄKELÄ: Welcome to the Flow Computing podcast. Today we'll dive deep into Flow Computing's PPU technology. And joining us today is Professor Dr Jörg Keller, professor with the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science in FernUniversität in Hagen. Professor Keller has done the technical due diligence on Flow’s parallel processing unit PPU. Welcome to the show.

JÖRG KELLER: Hello and good to be here. Today we have multi core processors. So processors with a largerer number of cores to increase the computing performance. Now for quite some time, those computing cores have all been the same.

JK: Then some time ago, manufacturers have started to introduce processors with different types of cores like Arm’s big little technology. Still all these cores have been independent of each other. Now, when we have code that can be parallelized, then it would be nice to have a number of cores that basically do the same and do this without the overhead that we get when each core is rather independent of each other. And this is where Flow’s technology comes in and where the PPU cores come in.

JK: So next to the standard CPU cores, we have a set of cores, that are largely doing the same thing at some time and thus can speed up some code without each having to fetch their program for themselves because they all do the same. And they don't need to maintain all the structures that normal CPU cores have to do to run a program. So we have an easy way to parallelize with less overhead.

JK: And moreover, the PPU cores can be smaller than a typical CPU core. And so their power consumption will also be lower.

Interested in a deeper dive into Flow Computing's PPU technology?

If you'd like to explore the technical details and insights from Professor Keller's due diligence, you can request access to the full report. Simply contact us at info@flow-computing.com, and we'll be happy to send it your way!