Examples of specialized architectures

This section examines some application-focused computing system configurations and highlights the specialized architectural requirements addressed in each. The configurations we will look at are:

• Cloud compute server: Several vendors offer access to computing platforms accessible to customers via the internet. These servers allow users to load software applications onto the cloud server and perform any type of computation they desire. In general, these services bill their customers based on the type and quantity of computing resources allocated and the length of time they are in use. The advantage for the customer is that these services cost nothing when they are not in use.

  At the higher end of performance, servers containing multiple interconnected GPU cards can be harnessed to perform large-scale, floating-point intensive computations on huge datasets. In the cloud context, it is straightforward and often cost-effective to break a...