Computing 'paradigm shift' could see phones and laptops run twice as fast — without replacing a single component

A new approach to computing could double the processing speed of devices like phones or laptops without needing to replace any of the existing components.

Modern devices are fitted with different chips that handle various types of processing. Alongside the central processing unit (CPU), devices have graphics processing units (GPUs), hardware accelerators for artificial intelligence (AI) workloads and digital signal processing units to process audio signals. 

Due to conventional program execution models, however, these components process data from one program separately and in sequence, which slows down processing times. 

Information moves from one unit to the next depending on which is most efficient at handling a particular region of code in a program. This creates a bottleneck, as one processor needs to finish its job before handing over a new task to the next processor in line. 

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To solve this, scientists have devised a new framework for program execution in which the processing units work in parallel. The team outlined the new approach, dubbed "simultaneous and heterogeneous multithreading (SHMT)," in a paper published in December 2023 to the preprint server arXiv.  

SHMT utilizes processing units simultaneously for the same code region — rather than waiting for processors to work on different regions of the code in a sequence based on which component is best for a particular workload.