4 ms·

It's so unusual to find projects like this. I have so much respect for these guys. It's always fun to see what they're working on. Lots of the technical specifi

by state 11y ago

It's so unusual to find projects like this. I have so much respect for these guys. It's always fun to see what they're working on. Lots of the technical specifics are over my head, but I really appreciate their tone and approach.

igravious 11y ago
Previous discussion (with a member of their team chiming in): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9856334 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9856334 Seems like a _fascinating_ architecture. I don't get the double program counter bit, also seems like too much cognitive overhead to me. The belt (queue of un-named slots) idea and function call for free with multiple return results, such that regular ops and user defined functions work the same way, that sure is clever. Godard mentions that the CPU space has seen little to no innovation. But what about Transmeta? They were doing some cool stuff, no? And the DEC Alpha, that was super interesting. Probably lots more besides. I'm sure if I bothered to check that Wikipedia would have a CPU graveyard page :) Thing is, x86 has been the only game in town for a long time with Motorola challenging in the past and ARM challenging now. Maybe time for a three horse race?
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  Alpha was amazing, and the DEC chip people were best-in-the-world talented. If DEC had made some smarter choices about personal computing we might have had 10 or 20GHz desktops now. Otherwise, CPU design is almost the poster-child for technical debt. The problems are more social and economic than technical. Once an architecture dominates the market it's almost impossible to replace it with something better. The best hope is to do what ARM are doing and sneak up on the market sideways, starting from a segment with much less competition.
  - Scaevolus 11y ago
    DEC would be able able to violate the laws of physics? The GHz barrier isn't caused by lack of talent, it's caused by basic thermal limits of silicon chips.
    - rancur 11y ago
      maybe they were focused on fabbing from germanium ingots? >germanium ingots 100ghz vs ~3ghz limit on silicon (which is the reason why we sometimes use Strained-Silicon-Gemanium
  - igravious 11y ago
    I don't mind admitting that I _lusted_ after a PC powered by an Alpha chip. All I knew is that spec-wise they seemed to blow Intel and Motorola out of the water. They were not too much pricier either. But alas, I was young, had no real £ of my own, so I could only dream. Eventually got an Atari STfm with a Moto 68k as that is what my folks could afford. Once something is baked into a CPU design that seems to be it forever alright, I take it that that's what you mean by technical debt. Besides, everybody up the stack (and that means everybody because you can't get much lower down the stack than the CPU) has got to re-tool. Mill Computing have been working on this for 12 years! Transmeta had Linus Torvalds for crying out loud. Best-in-the-world does not cut it when it comes to CPU design. Compatibility and small incremental logical changes seems to trump all. Or do what ARM are doing, as you say.
- georgemcbay 11y ago
  Intel's own Itanium was also very interesting and ultimately a failure. memristor is going to take over the world a year from now, just like it has been going to for the past 7 years. Exotic computing (CPU and/or memory) architectures are easier (still hard, but easier) to dream up than to implement on real hardware with a real software ecosystem (while still keeping the theoretical benefits). As a tech geek I think what they are doing with the Mill is pretty fascinating, but it "looks like a duck, quacks like a duck" in the way of transmeta, alpha, itanium, etc, and I'm old and jaded so I'd honestly be pretty shocked if anything came of it.
  - CarVac 11y ago
    Well, part of their strategy is to be able to much more rapidly design a wide variety of specialized parts, such as their ability to generate the specification computationally in 15 minutes. They recognize that the needs of the market are changing rapidly, and they have to be able to meet any of them. Hopefully this lets them pivot and take advantage of new opportunities better than previous efforts to make a superior CPU.
    - koffiezet 11y ago
      This quick & easy specialization might be a part of what could give them market share, but I don't think this is their best shot. While this "IoT" might be the most stupid buzzword I've ever heard, what it stands for is true: everything will be networked in the future. The only thing that matters here is that devices can talk together, and this might be their biggest shot. These days micro-controllers are already being replaced by cheap ARM's that run circles around them and are easier to develop for. This is an area where the semi-conductor industry will grow massively. If they're able to prove that their design offers the same processing power for less power, a whole lot of companies could be interested.
- Veedrac 11y ago
  Their encoding talk was a longer version of the first half of this. If you're confused about the double program counter, it will probably help. http://millcomputing.com/docs/encoding/ http://millcomputing.com/docs/encoding/
- rasz_pl 11y ago
  AMD K7 is a DEC Alpha with x86 decoder glued in front. Transmeta lives on somewhere inside intel chips.
  - ajross 11y ago
    Other way around really. AMD licensed a front side bus from DEC/Compaq. The chip designers all ended up at Intel. The closest living descendent of the Alpha 21264 is Skylake.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]

by state 11y ago

igravious 11y ago

Previous discussion (with a member of their team chiming in): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9856334 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9856334 Seems like a _fascinating_ architecture. I don't get the double program counter bit, also seems like too much cognitive overhead to me. The belt (queue of un-named slots) idea and function call for free with multiple return results, such that regular ops and user defined functions work the same way, that sure is clever. Godard mentions that the CPU space has seen little to no innovation. But what about Transmeta? They were doing some cool stuff, no? And the DEC Alpha, that was super interesting. Probably lots more besides. I'm sure if I bothered to check that Wikipedia would have a CPU graveyard page :) Thing is, x86 has been the only game in town for a long time with Motorola challenging in the past and ARM challenging now. Maybe time for a three horse race?

TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
Alpha was amazing, and the DEC chip people were best-in-the-world talented. If DEC had made some smarter choices about personal computing we might have had 10 or 20GHz desktops now. Otherwise, CPU design is almost the poster-child for technical debt. The problems are more social and economic than technical. Once an architecture dominates the market it's almost impossible to replace it with something better. The best hope is to do what ARM are doing and sneak up on the market sideways, starting from a segment with much less competition.
- Scaevolus 11y ago
  DEC would be able able to violate the laws of physics? The GHz barrier isn't caused by lack of talent, it's caused by basic thermal limits of silicon chips.
  - rancur 11y ago
    maybe they were focused on fabbing from germanium ingots? >germanium ingots 100ghz vs ~3ghz limit on silicon (which is the reason why we sometimes use Strained-Silicon-Gemanium
- igravious 11y ago
  I don't mind admitting that I _lusted_ after a PC powered by an Alpha chip. All I knew is that spec-wise they seemed to blow Intel and Motorola out of the water. They were not too much pricier either. But alas, I was young, had no real £ of my own, so I could only dream. Eventually got an Atari STfm with a Moto 68k as that is what my folks could afford. Once something is baked into a CPU design that seems to be it forever alright, I take it that that's what you mean by technical debt. Besides, everybody up the stack (and that means everybody because you can't get much lower down the stack than the CPU) has got to re-tool. Mill Computing have been working on this for 12 years! Transmeta had Linus Torvalds for crying out loud. Best-in-the-world does not cut it when it comes to CPU design. Compatibility and small incremental logical changes seems to trump all. Or do what ARM are doing, as you say.
georgemcbay 11y ago
Intel's own Itanium was also very interesting and ultimately a failure. memristor is going to take over the world a year from now, just like it has been going to for the past 7 years. Exotic computing (CPU and/or memory) architectures are easier (still hard, but easier) to dream up than to implement on real hardware with a real software ecosystem (while still keeping the theoretical benefits). As a tech geek I think what they are doing with the Mill is pretty fascinating, but it "looks like a duck, quacks like a duck" in the way of transmeta, alpha, itanium, etc, and I'm old and jaded so I'd honestly be pretty shocked if anything came of it.
- CarVac 11y ago
  Well, part of their strategy is to be able to much more rapidly design a wide variety of specialized parts, such as their ability to generate the specification computationally in 15 minutes. They recognize that the needs of the market are changing rapidly, and they have to be able to meet any of them. Hopefully this lets them pivot and take advantage of new opportunities better than previous efforts to make a superior CPU.
  - koffiezet 11y ago
    This quick & easy specialization might be a part of what could give them market share, but I don't think this is their best shot. While this "IoT" might be the most stupid buzzword I've ever heard, what it stands for is true: everything will be networked in the future. The only thing that matters here is that devices can talk together, and this might be their biggest shot. These days micro-controllers are already being replaced by cheap ARM's that run circles around them and are easier to develop for. This is an area where the semi-conductor industry will grow massively. If they're able to prove that their design offers the same processing power for less power, a whole lot of companies could be interested.
Veedrac 11y ago
Their encoding talk was a longer version of the first half of this. If you're confused about the double program counter, it will probably help. http://millcomputing.com/docs/encoding/ http://millcomputing.com/docs/encoding/
rasz_pl 11y ago
AMD K7 is a DEC Alpha with x86 decoder glued in front. Transmeta lives on somewhere inside intel chips.
- ajross 11y ago
  Other way around really. AMD licensed a front side bus from DEC/Compaq. The chip designers all ended up at Intel. The closest living descendent of the Alpha 21264 is Skylake.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]