4 ms·

Moore's law was the result of constant development in the lowest level of integrated circuits - lithography and chemistry. Moore's law made most higher level h

Moore's law was the result of constant development in the lowest level of integrated circuits - lithography and chemistry. Moore's law made most higher level hardware architecture innovation almost meaningless. Developing new kinds of parallel computers (Gray, Thinking Machines) was dead end when conventional computers made from Intel chips reached the same level in few years without specialized software. Things have already changed. First specialized Graphics processors and now GPGPU are the first break from the normal. GPGPU's technology is one level up from lithography and silicon chemistry. It's different architecture and different programming paradigm. This will be the first time Intel is not going to shake it off with faster GPU. We should expect more higher level hardware innovations. Integrating GPU functions into DRAM chips might be the next step.

rasz_pl 10y ago
Micron had ram integrated state machine for some time now, nothing came out of that :( http://www.micronautomata.com/ http://www.micronautomata.com/ They might be missing the boat by not releasing cheap entry level hardware platform, ~$20 ddr3/4 stick.
- agumonkey 10y ago
  Considering how often the RAM bottleneck was mentioned in computer performances talks I'm still surprised simple logic / arith instructions didn't hit mainstream RAM modules.
  - lomnakkus 10y ago
    I'm obviously just speculating and handwaving wildly here[1], but ISTM that -- currently -- the limitation here lies mainly in programming languages and semantics. AFAICT all of the non-traditional machine models require radically different programming paradigms[2] and we still aren't quite at that point where gaining more performance is painful enough that the necessary research/innovation will happen. That's assuming that it's even possible. Obviously, any model of computation places some limitations on what can happen and all information transfer (thus computation) is still limited by the speed of light. Some things are just going to remain out of reach forever and not even Quantum Computers are going to help. [1] As I suppose we all are. C'mon we're talking about predicting the future here. [2] If you want a practical example, look at the PS/3 Cell processor. I can't claim to have done any 'native' programming for the PS/3, but I've heard (from very clever people that I trust) that it was quite alien and required radically different program structure from what one is used to. And that architecture isn't even that different from 'normal' architectures.
    - agumonkey 10y ago
      Naive thoughts, compilers could emit ram-local instructions instead of register spill and the likes. Maybe not fancy stuff but I thought there could be a nice class of block swap, or block (inc) that could be generated without too much burden in terms of semantics.
- nabla9 10y ago
  There was Intelligent RAM (IRAM) Project in berkeley 16 years ago. They had many interesting ideas that may be relevant tomorrow. http://iram.cs.berkeley.edu/ http://iram.cs.berkeley.edu/
dalke 10y ago
You mentioned "First specialized Graphics processors". I think we can extend things backwards a bit. Earlier machines had specialized sound processors and MPEG decoder chips. As I recall, the early Macs used a 6502 as an I/O controller, and you could get a card for your Apple ][ that would run IBM PC software. I only mean to extend your timeline. I don't think my observations change your conclusion.

rasz_pl 10y ago

Micron had ram integrated state machine for some time now, nothing came out of that :( http://www.micronautomata.com/ http://www.micronautomata.com/ They might be missing the boat by not releasing cheap entry level hardware platform, ~$20 ddr3/4 stick.

agumonkey 10y ago
Considering how often the RAM bottleneck was mentioned in computer performances talks I'm still surprised simple logic / arith instructions didn't hit mainstream RAM modules.
- lomnakkus 10y ago
  I'm obviously just speculating and handwaving wildly here[1], but ISTM that -- currently -- the limitation here lies mainly in programming languages and semantics. AFAICT all of the non-traditional machine models require radically different programming paradigms[2] and we still aren't quite at that point where gaining more performance is painful enough that the necessary research/innovation will happen. That's assuming that it's even possible. Obviously, any model of computation places some limitations on what can happen and all information transfer (thus computation) is still limited by the speed of light. Some things are just going to remain out of reach forever and not even Quantum Computers are going to help. [1] As I suppose we all are. C'mon we're talking about predicting the future here. [2] If you want a practical example, look at the PS/3 Cell processor. I can't claim to have done any 'native' programming for the PS/3, but I've heard (from very clever people that I trust) that it was quite alien and required radically different program structure from what one is used to. And that architecture isn't even that different from 'normal' architectures.
  - agumonkey 10y ago
    Naive thoughts, compilers could emit ram-local instructions instead of register spill and the likes. Maybe not fancy stuff but I thought there could be a nice class of block swap, or block (inc) that could be generated without too much burden in terms of semantics.
nabla9 10y ago
There was Intelligent RAM (IRAM) Project in berkeley 16 years ago. They had many interesting ideas that may be relevant tomorrow. http://iram.cs.berkeley.edu/ http://iram.cs.berkeley.edu/

dalke 10y ago

You mentioned "First specialized Graphics processors". I think we can extend things backwards a bit. Earlier machines had specialized sound processors and MPEG decoder chips. As I recall, the early Macs used a 6502 as an I/O controller, and you could get a card for your Apple ][ that would run IBM PC software. I only mean to extend your timeline. I don't think my observations change your conclusion.