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If you're looking for innovation on vector operations (i.e. not packed SIMD or GPU-style SPMD), then RISC-V's vector extension (especially if you consider exten
by microcolonel 9y ago
If you're looking for innovation on vector operations (i.e. not packed SIMD or GPU-style SPMD), then RISC-V's vector extension (especially if you consider extensions to it for graphics or scientific compute or machine learning) should seem very promising. It's not technically groundbreaking (Cray did it first), but I think it has more potential than the endless treadmill of wider packed SIMD instructions (which dissipate an immense amount of power on intel's hardware), and it is amenable to more general tasks than SPMD is.
- nickpsecurity 9y agoI assumed they just went for parity since they were on smaller budgets. You're saying they did something clever with a Cray reference. Could you elaborate on that?
- CalChris 9y agoWell, that was the subject of Krste's thesis at Berkeley: Vector Microprocessors https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~krste/thesis.html https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~krste/thesis.html
- microcolonel 9y agoI wasn't aware that it was his thesis, thanks for pointing that out. There's also all the work on the Xhwacha RoCC (which I knew prof. Asanović was involved with). I think it all looks very promising and makes me eager to see what comes out of SiFive with Yunsup and Krste at or near the helm.