4 ms·

This is so obviously not going to fly unless they either start bundling with Xeons, or offer something Xilinx can’t do. Cloud providers aren’t stupid, and there

by 0xbear 9y ago

This is so obviously not going to fly unless they either start bundling with Xeons, or offer something Xilinx can’t do. Cloud providers aren’t stupid, and there are enough eggs in the Intel basket already.

microcolonel 9y ago
Maybe they could offer a good (maybe open?) toolchain, online partial reprogramming?
- 0xbear 9y ago
  The words Intel and “open” do not really belong in the same sentence.
  - microcolonel 9y ago
    Idunno, Xeon Phi, their GPUs since about 2007 (though a lot better recently), good cooperation and documentation with their NICs, direct participation in both major open compiler toolchains, all the stuff that 01.org lists... I think they're doing pretty well with open (aside from the products themselves, but that's kinda the point of having a company). Frankly Intel has done an adequate to good job of providing open source software to interact with all of their hardware for as long as I've been computering. They're the one vendor that has never told me to install a proprietary driver.
    - 0xbear 9y ago
      You can’t even use their main product without loading in opaque binary blobs and agreeing to a backdoor.
      - microcolonel 9y ago
        That's true, that's my greatest gripe with them. It's a major part of why I'm looking to other platforms for my workstation. That said, you can't escape that with their nearest competitor, so it's a bit of a moot point for now.
pratumlabs 9y ago
One of the key benefits of Intel's solution is that the CPU and FPGA share the same RAM, avoiding the O(N) cost of moving data to/from the devices. This type of a zero-copy transaction can enable very high performance applications compared with dedicated discrete cards.
- dragontamer 9y ago
  AMD already does "Zero Copy transfers" (the on-chip cache!!) with its "Fusion" APUs (ex: A10-7850K) for CPU <<---->> GPU. I'm not really seeing loads of people taking advantage of the feature however. The platform is cheap, the technology is available but its just way too weird an architecture to become mainstream. There are numerous benefits: the CPU can create a linked list or graph, and the memory will still be valid on the GPU. CPU / GPU atomics are unified, and GPUs can even call CPU functions under AMD's HSA platform. * https://images.anandtech.com/doci/7677/20%20-%20HSA%20Use%20Cases.jpg https://images.anandtech.com/doci/7677/20%20-%20HSA%20Use%20... * http://developer.amd.com/wordpress/media/2012/10/hsa10.pdf http://developer.amd.com/wordpress/media/2012/10/hsa10.pdf * https://www.anandtech.com/show/7677/amd-kaveri-review-a8-7600-a10-7850k/6 https://www.anandtech.com/show/7677/amd-kaveri-review-a8-760... --------- I think Intel had a similar technology implemented on their "Crystalwell" chips, which were basically an L4 cache which provided a high-bandwidth link between the CPU and GPU (although not quite as flexible). No, its not an FPGA, but OpenCL / GPGPU compute seems to be a bit more mainstream than FPGA compute at the moment. I haven't seen too much excitement in general for this feature however.
  - imtringued 9y ago
    >I'm not really seeing loads of people taking advantage of the feature however. The platform is cheap, the technology is available but its just way too weird an architecture to become mainstream. AMD sells a consumer product. For most consumers even a smartphone offers enough CPU and GPU performance. The content producers who care about performance usually buy the best CPU and GPU. HSA isn't available on AMD's Ryzen or Threadripper processors. Intel is trying to sell to datacenters where performance or energy efficiency is a major selling point.
Andys 9y ago
Intel really don't do anything unless they already have a market for it. They have bundled with Xeons in the past. If there turns out to be a market (which comes down to tools and cloud platform to make this existing tech much more accessible) then it'll be huge and they'll need to be part of it.

by 0xbear 9y ago

microcolonel 9y ago

Maybe they could offer a good (maybe open?) toolchain, online partial reprogramming?

0xbear 9y ago
The words Intel and “open” do not really belong in the same sentence.
- microcolonel 9y ago
  Idunno, Xeon Phi, their GPUs since about 2007 (though a lot better recently), good cooperation and documentation with their NICs, direct participation in both major open compiler toolchains, all the stuff that 01.org lists... I think they're doing pretty well with open (aside from the products themselves, but that's kinda the point of having a company). Frankly Intel has done an adequate to good job of providing open source software to interact with all of their hardware for as long as I've been computering. They're the one vendor that has never told me to install a proprietary driver.
  - 0xbear 9y ago
    You can’t even use their main product without loading in opaque binary blobs and agreeing to a backdoor.
    - microcolonel 9y ago
      That's true, that's my greatest gripe with them. It's a major part of why I'm looking to other platforms for my workstation. That said, you can't escape that with their nearest competitor, so it's a bit of a moot point for now.

pratumlabs 9y ago

One of the key benefits of Intel's solution is that the CPU and FPGA share the same RAM, avoiding the O(N) cost of moving data to/from the devices. This type of a zero-copy transaction can enable very high performance applications compared with dedicated discrete cards.

dragontamer 9y ago
AMD already does "Zero Copy transfers" (the on-chip cache!!) with its "Fusion" APUs (ex: A10-7850K) for CPU <<---->> GPU. I'm not really seeing loads of people taking advantage of the feature however. The platform is cheap, the technology is available but its just way too weird an architecture to become mainstream. There are numerous benefits: the CPU can create a linked list or graph, and the memory will still be valid on the GPU. CPU / GPU atomics are unified, and GPUs can even call CPU functions under AMD's HSA platform. * https://images.anandtech.com/doci/7677/20%20-%20HSA%20Use%20Cases.jpg https://images.anandtech.com/doci/7677/20%20-%20HSA%20Use%20... * http://developer.amd.com/wordpress/media/2012/10/hsa10.pdf http://developer.amd.com/wordpress/media/2012/10/hsa10.pdf * https://www.anandtech.com/show/7677/amd-kaveri-review-a8-7600-a10-7850k/6 https://www.anandtech.com/show/7677/amd-kaveri-review-a8-760... --------- I think Intel had a similar technology implemented on their "Crystalwell" chips, which were basically an L4 cache which provided a high-bandwidth link between the CPU and GPU (although not quite as flexible). No, its not an FPGA, but OpenCL / GPGPU compute seems to be a bit more mainstream than FPGA compute at the moment. I haven't seen too much excitement in general for this feature however.
- imtringued 9y ago
  >I'm not really seeing loads of people taking advantage of the feature however. The platform is cheap, the technology is available but its just way too weird an architecture to become mainstream. AMD sells a consumer product. For most consumers even a smartphone offers enough CPU and GPU performance. The content producers who care about performance usually buy the best CPU and GPU. HSA isn't available on AMD's Ryzen or Threadripper processors. Intel is trying to sell to datacenters where performance or energy efficiency is a major selling point.

Andys 9y ago

Intel really don't do anything unless they already have a market for it. They have bundled with Xeons in the past. If there turns out to be a market (which comes down to tools and cloud platform to make this existing tech much more accessible) then it'll be huge and they'll need to be part of it.