3 ms·

Anybody know if and when desktop CPU's might start getting FPGAs? Been waiting for that for a while now...

rbanffy 9y ago
Not before mainstream software supports it. We had 64-bit with Alpha, MIPS, SPARC, but 64-bit x86 only happened when it could run 32-bit x86 code flawlessly and it only got mass adoption when Windows went 64-bit.
- wfunction 9y ago
  How can you get mainstream support when nobody has it to program for it?
  - rbanffy 9y ago
    Seeding programs. You give your hardware to selected partners so they can develop for it before it hits general availability.
    - wfunction 9y ago
      Not sure how that would work in this sort of situation but I suppose I can't rule it out...
      - rbanffy 9y ago
        If tomorrow IBM came out with a POWER8 box at a price point competitive with my Xeon E3 workhorse running full Fedora 25 or Ubuntu 17.04, I wouldn't think twice. Same goes for Oracle and SPARC. The lowest POWER goes is in the mid E5 range, which I can't justify for my home office.
- bhouston 9y ago
  We only got Intel 64 bit CPUs once AMD got them first and people starting to buy them.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    We only got x86 Intel 64-bit CPUs when AMD did AMD64. Intel was trying to get everyone to go down the Itanium route but AMD forced them to do their own x86 64-bit extensions.
  - wolfgke 9y ago
    > We only got Intel 64 bit CPUs once AMD got them first and people starting to buy them. Intel came first with Itanium (June 2001: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Itanium&oldid=775602971#Itanium_.28Merced.29:_2001 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Itanium&oldid=775...), which clearly is a 64 bit CPU. The first x86-64 CPU by AMD got released in April 2003 (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=X86-64&oldid=775455698#History https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=X86-64&oldid=7754...) and Intel's first x86-64 CPU came out June 2004 (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=X86-64&oldid=775455698#History_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=X86-64&oldid=7754...).
    - rbanffy 9y ago
      Alpha, SPARC and MIPS had 64-bit offerings before that. I was reading e-mail on a 64-bit machine when Itanium was called Merced.
      - wolfgke 9y ago
        My parent was talking about Intel 64 bit CPUs.
        rbanffy 9y ago
        Sorry. I was comparing both sides as an analogy why FPGA's won't be available on mass-market CPUs anytime soon. The reason Itanium never achieved the mass acceptance Intel expected is because, even with Windows running on it, it never ran x86 software at a reasonable price/performance point. Java was Sun's attempt to make SPARC viable by breaking with the ISA compatibility problem. Today, with Linux, JVM, .NET Core and interpreted languages running a lot of the server workloads we have, it'd probably be a very different story. When compared with the other 64-bit architectures we had (I forgot IBM's z/Architecture) amd64 is still an awful register starved overcomplicated architecture.
sbierwagen 9y ago
http://www.eweek.com/servers/intel-begins-shipping-xeon-chips-with-fpga-accelerators http://www.eweek.com/servers/intel-begins-shipping-xeon-chip... For the desktop, though? Not for a while.
- wfunction 9y ago
  Yeah, I was aware of this, I did mean for a desktop. But if I want to get this, would it come with all the software tools and whatnot? I have no idea what tools it would need or whether they need more money to compile code etc...
CalChris 9y ago
Ask yourself what use you have for an FPGA on the desktop that you couldn't use the GPU for. Fact is, your desktop will include a GPU anyways. So that FPGA will not be in lieu of but rather in addition to. So this will only change when either of a couple things happen. One is demand side: a killer application on the desktop which requires an FPGA comes along and drives demand. The other is supply side: the demand for CPU+FPGA is so great from Amazon+Microsoft+Google that chip manufacturers just supply it in desktops for 'nothing'. An example of the demand side is game graphics. I don't need this but a lot of people do and then my UI graphics get better. An example of the supply side is that I don't really need cryptographic grade random number seeds, RDSEED, but I get it for free because someone who buys a ton more than I do does need this. I don't see this happening for 5-10 years.

Not before mainstream software supports it. We had 64-bit with Alpha, MIPS, SPARC, but 64-bit x86 only happened when it could run 32-bit x86 code flawlessly and it only got mass adoption when Windows went 64-bit.

wfunction 9y ago
How can you get mainstream support when nobody has it to program for it?
- rbanffy 9y ago
  Seeding programs. You give your hardware to selected partners so they can develop for it before it hits general availability.
  - wfunction 9y ago
    Not sure how that would work in this sort of situation but I suppose I can't rule it out...
    - rbanffy 9y ago
      If tomorrow IBM came out with a POWER8 box at a price point competitive with my Xeon E3 workhorse running full Fedora 25 or Ubuntu 17.04, I wouldn't think twice. Same goes for Oracle and SPARC. The lowest POWER goes is in the mid E5 range, which I can't justify for my home office.
bhouston 9y ago
We only got Intel 64 bit CPUs once AMD got them first and people starting to buy them.
- ghaff 9y ago
  We only got x86 Intel 64-bit CPUs when AMD did AMD64. Intel was trying to get everyone to go down the Itanium route but AMD forced them to do their own x86 64-bit extensions.
- wolfgke 9y ago
  > We only got Intel 64 bit CPUs once AMD got them first and people starting to buy them. Intel came first with Itanium (June 2001: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Itanium&oldid=775602971#Itanium_.28Merced.29:_2001 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Itanium&oldid=775...), which clearly is a 64 bit CPU. The first x86-64 CPU by AMD got released in April 2003 (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=X86-64&oldid=775455698#History https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=X86-64&oldid=7754...) and Intel's first x86-64 CPU came out June 2004 (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=X86-64&oldid=775455698#History_2 https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=X86-64&oldid=7754...).
  - rbanffy 9y ago
    Alpha, SPARC and MIPS had 64-bit offerings before that. I was reading e-mail on a 64-bit machine when Itanium was called Merced.
    - wolfgke 9y ago
      My parent was talking about Intel 64 bit CPUs.
      - rbanffy 9y ago
        Sorry. I was comparing both sides as an analogy why FPGA's won't be available on mass-market CPUs anytime soon. The reason Itanium never achieved the mass acceptance Intel expected is because, even with Windows running on it, it never ran x86 software at a reasonable price/performance point. Java was Sun's attempt to make SPARC viable by breaking with the ISA compatibility problem. Today, with Linux, JVM, .NET Core and interpreted languages running a lot of the server workloads we have, it'd probably be a very different story. When compared with the other 64-bit architectures we had (I forgot IBM's z/Architecture) amd64 is still an awful register starved overcomplicated architecture.

sbierwagen 9y ago

http://www.eweek.com/servers/intel-begins-shipping-xeon-chips-with-fpga-accelerators http://www.eweek.com/servers/intel-begins-shipping-xeon-chip... For the desktop, though? Not for a while.

wfunction 9y ago
Yeah, I was aware of this, I did mean for a desktop. But if I want to get this, would it come with all the software tools and whatnot? I have no idea what tools it would need or whether they need more money to compile code etc...

CalChris 9y ago

Ask yourself what use you have for an FPGA on the desktop that you couldn't use the GPU for. Fact is, your desktop will include a GPU anyways. So that FPGA will not be in lieu of but rather in addition to. So this will only change when either of a couple things happen. One is demand side: a killer application on the desktop which requires an FPGA comes along and drives demand. The other is supply side: the demand for CPU+FPGA is so great from Amazon+Microsoft+Google that chip manufacturers just supply it in desktops for 'nothing'. An example of the demand side is game graphics. I don't need this but a lot of people do and then my UI graphics get better. An example of the supply side is that I don't really need cryptographic grade random number seeds, RDSEED, but I get it for free because someone who buys a ton more than I do does need this. I don't see this happening for 5-10 years.