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custom asic processor Is that like La Brea Tarpit? Just say ASIC. An ASIC is an Application Specific Integrated Circuit. In particular, a GPU is not an ASIC.
by CalChris 10y ago
custom asic processor
Is that like La Brea Tarpit? Just say ASIC.
An ASIC is an Application Specific Integrated Circuit. In particular, a GPU is not an ASIC. Saying Custom Application Specific Integrated Circuit Processor is doubly redundant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application-specific_integrated_circuit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application-specific_integrate...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_processing_unit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_processing_unit
- gumby 10y agoI don't think so: a GPU is application-specific, (not GPGPU if such a thing really exists), as are other ones. Lisp Machine chips were application-specific. Various application-specific accelerator chips have been designed for FP, video decoding, security etc. Where you're right is that Nirvana was a chip company founded for this ASIC and I think the term "custom" is misnomer. You could argue that Google isn't a chip company so theirs are custom.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jacquesm 10y agoA GPU actually also is an ASIC, it just happens to be that that application is a different one.
- wyldfire 10y agoI wouldn't describe something capable of executing something quite so flexible as shaders/kernels an ASIC. It sounds much closer to a CPU -- designed to execute nearly arbitrary software. And if we're including chips that execute software as ASICs, then it seems to really water down the term to be meaningless.