4 ms·

On-Chip Interconnection Architecture of the Tile Processor (2007) [pdf]

31 points by steven741 8y ago

UncleEntity 8y ago
Are those things even for sale anymore? Did a (quick) google search and found one on e-bay and that's about it.
- steven741 8y ago
  Sort of. Tilera got acquired EZchip Semiconductor who merged with Mellanox Technologies. However, support for the TILE architecture isn't what it used to be. http://www.mellanox.com/page/multi_core_overview?mtag=multi_core_overview http://www.mellanox.com/page/multi_core_overview?mtag=multi_...
  - jburgess777 8y ago
    The tile architecture was dropped from the Linux kernel in 4.17 https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=bb9d812643d8a121df7d614a2b9c60193a92deb0 https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin...
- wmf 8y ago
  Tilera evolved into Mellanox BlueField, although it's not clear whether the tile interconnect is still used. https://www.hpcwire.com/2016/06/01/mellanox-spins-ezchip-acquisition-bluefield-silicon/ https://www.hpcwire.com/2016/06/01/mellanox-spins-ezchip-acq...
ernon 8y ago
Ahh Tilera. When MIT's RAW architecture went commercial and became Tilera, it looked like the multicore future was finally coming. They had a lot of nice devtools, like an eclipse-based simulator that let you visualize what was going on in the chip. 64 cores was really appealing, but because they didn't have floating point in the first set of chips, people mainly used them for network processing. Then.. Intel started talking about Larrabee (why use Tilera when you could just run p54c x86), and Nvidia started to become more programmable via Cuda. Eventually EZChip acquired Tilera (2014), which was then acquired by Mellanox (the hpc network company). Last I saw (2016), Mellanox was using trying to put the tilera stuff in the BlueField products (NVMe over Fabrics target, I think): https://www.hpcwire.com/2016/06/01/mellanox-spins-ezchip-acquisition-bluefield-silicon/ https://www.hpcwire.com/2016/06/01/mellanox-spins-ezchip-acq... Anyone know what happened with BlueField?
- wtallis 8y ago
  BlueField is currently shipping in "smart NICs" and should be shipping as the host processor in storage appliances by the end of the year. It seems to be the cheapest and lowest-power option at the moment for getting PCIe gen 4 IO, compared to IBM's POWER9. They definitely abandoned the approach of having a very large number of weak cores after being acquired, but they're still using a mesh interconnect based on the Tilera IP.
- wbraun 8y ago
  I once found a development motherboard for the RAW processor at a MIT loading dock ( https://flic.kr/p/Fw8cKb https://flic.kr/p/Fw8cKb ). I always wondered what happened to the project. Thanks for the full history!
  - exikyut 8y ago
    Hmmm, I think my new how-can-I-figure-out-how-to-do-that might be coming up with creative ways to be a recycling center's loading dock coordinator. More specifically, it sounds like I want to be the person in charge of disposals. Now to figure out how to make this happen....
- senatorobama 8y ago
  You seem to know a lot. Any nice startups in this space?
  - deepnotderp 8y ago
    In general purpose parallel processors? Ambric had some interesting tech
  - daniel-cussen 8y ago
    Greenarrays is still going. They've made some new app notes. I've found the 64x18b word limitation of memory per computer much less daunting than I did at the beginning, simply because how amazingly terse you can make your code. You also end up just simplifying, making your look-up-table or other array 8 or 16 words long...sometimes 32 or 64, but that's a bit more work. One experiment I've done with it is harnessing 95 simultaneous cores for a virus vat, with a 47 core vat enclosure keeping it from hanging. The last 2 nodes are I/O and the probe to see what's going on. The virus is exactly one 18b word.
fallingfrog 8y ago
This looks really similar to that adapteva chip a few years back.. http://adapteva.com/docs/epiphany_arch_ref.pdf http://adapteva.com/docs/epiphany_arch_ref.pdf

31 points by steven741 8y ago

UncleEntity 8y ago

Are those things even for sale anymore? Did a (quick) google search and found one on e-bay and that's about it.

steven741 8y ago
Sort of. Tilera got acquired EZchip Semiconductor who merged with Mellanox Technologies. However, support for the TILE architecture isn't what it used to be. http://www.mellanox.com/page/multi_core_overview?mtag=multi_core_overview http://www.mellanox.com/page/multi_core_overview?mtag=multi_...
- jburgess777 8y ago
  The tile architecture was dropped from the Linux kernel in 4.17 https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=bb9d812643d8a121df7d614a2b9c60193a92deb0 https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin...
wmf 8y ago
Tilera evolved into Mellanox BlueField, although it's not clear whether the tile interconnect is still used. https://www.hpcwire.com/2016/06/01/mellanox-spins-ezchip-acquisition-bluefield-silicon/ https://www.hpcwire.com/2016/06/01/mellanox-spins-ezchip-acq...

ernon 8y ago

Ahh Tilera. When MIT's RAW architecture went commercial and became Tilera, it looked like the multicore future was finally coming. They had a lot of nice devtools, like an eclipse-based simulator that let you visualize what was going on in the chip. 64 cores was really appealing, but because they didn't have floating point in the first set of chips, people mainly used them for network processing. Then.. Intel started talking about Larrabee (why use Tilera when you could just run p54c x86), and Nvidia started to become more programmable via Cuda. Eventually EZChip acquired Tilera (2014), which was then acquired by Mellanox (the hpc network company). Last I saw (2016), Mellanox was using trying to put the tilera stuff in the BlueField products (NVMe over Fabrics target, I think): https://www.hpcwire.com/2016/06/01/mellanox-spins-ezchip-acquisition-bluefield-silicon/ https://www.hpcwire.com/2016/06/01/mellanox-spins-ezchip-acq... Anyone know what happened with BlueField?

wtallis 8y ago
BlueField is currently shipping in "smart NICs" and should be shipping as the host processor in storage appliances by the end of the year. It seems to be the cheapest and lowest-power option at the moment for getting PCIe gen 4 IO, compared to IBM's POWER9. They definitely abandoned the approach of having a very large number of weak cores after being acquired, but they're still using a mesh interconnect based on the Tilera IP.
wbraun 8y ago
I once found a development motherboard for the RAW processor at a MIT loading dock ( https://flic.kr/p/Fw8cKb https://flic.kr/p/Fw8cKb ). I always wondered what happened to the project. Thanks for the full history!
- exikyut 8y ago
  Hmmm, I think my new how-can-I-figure-out-how-to-do-that might be coming up with creative ways to be a recycling center's loading dock coordinator. More specifically, it sounds like I want to be the person in charge of disposals. Now to figure out how to make this happen....
senatorobama 8y ago
You seem to know a lot. Any nice startups in this space?
- deepnotderp 8y ago
  In general purpose parallel processors? Ambric had some interesting tech
- daniel-cussen 8y ago
  Greenarrays is still going. They've made some new app notes. I've found the 64x18b word limitation of memory per computer much less daunting than I did at the beginning, simply because how amazingly terse you can make your code. You also end up just simplifying, making your look-up-table or other array 8 or 16 words long...sometimes 32 or 64, but that's a bit more work. One experiment I've done with it is harnessing 95 simultaneous cores for a virus vat, with a 47 core vat enclosure keeping it from hanging. The last 2 nodes are I/O and the probe to see what's going on. The virus is exactly one 18b word.

fallingfrog 8y ago

This looks really similar to that adapteva chip a few years back.. http://adapteva.com/docs/epiphany_arch_ref.pdf http://adapteva.com/docs/epiphany_arch_ref.pdf