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Not at all. Specialized coprocessors are mainstream actually - from network cards offloading to small chip in every iPhone, and for a reason. The obvious way f
by snaky 8y ago
Not at all. Specialized coprocessors are mainstream actually - from network cards offloading to small chip in every iPhone, and for a reason.
The obvious way forward is universal specialized coprocessors, reprogrammable for the task(s). Better if tightly integrated with the memory, buses and CPUs.
The weak side of FPGA historically is programmability and especially the tools. But since the interest for FPGA is growing exponentionally in open-source community in recent years, things may change.
And by the way, 10 years ago you would say that exactly 'niche' words about GPU.
- maxerickson 8y agoHow is every consumer device with a display "niche"?
- oarsinsync 8y agoDedicated GPUs were not required historically to drive displays, and this was done by the CPU instead. Similarly, we’re finding more functions we can take away from the CPU and migrate to dedicated circuitry (FPGAs) that can handle those tasks more efficiently than the CPU can.
- Retric 8y agodedicated circuitry != FPGAs. GPU's avoid the overhead of FPGAs while still retaining a lot of flexibility.
- angry_octet 8y agoBecause they were all 2D. And the idea that GPUs would be used for mobile computing was not obvious.
- maxerickson 8y agoMaybe 25 years ago. 10 years ago they were commonplace. Intel shipped integrated 3d graphics by no later than 1999: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_810 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_810
- snaky 8y agoOkay, I should have clarify the 'niche' thing 10 years ago was not GPU per se, but of course GPGPU, the GPU as a specialized coprocessor for general purpose computation, not restricted to graphics processing and output.
- angry_octet 8y agoLol I don't know who bought that. Anyone who wanted 3D was buying Voodoo, RIVA TNT or ATI RAGE. Everyone else was happily 2D and running Word 95. But, to clarify, I was speaking of consumer/mobile. The original iPhone was quite revolutionary for having a decent PowerVR graphics chip. High end symbian phones just had a CPU. See for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_6110_Navigator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_6110_Navigator or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Razr2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Razr2 Even though GPGPU was already big in 2008, people still thought of it as a difficult to use coprocessor for big compute jobs. Much as people consider FPGAs now.
- maxerickson 8y agoI didn't highlight it as a desirable 3d processor, I pointed it out because 3d was essentially becoming default at that point. And the first iPhone shipping with a powerful graphics chip is a counter to your argument that the future of mobile wasn't clear. The people with the ideas wanted a graphics processor.
- angry_octet 8y agoThe fact that the entire industry apart from Apple (a computer company, not a phone/device company) were completely ignoring 3D exactly shows that it was NOT obvious or clear. After Apple demonstrated the potential it became clear.
- Symmetry 8y agoSpecialized coprocessors are super common but they're basically all ASICs with nary an FPGA to be found. In theory you could have reconfigurable co-processors on a mainstream chip but nobody does that - partially because the latency involved in reconfiguring the FPGA makes it a losing proposition in most cases. There are uses for FPGAs where there's enough money at stake for the hardware development but the number of units is small - stuff like high frequency trading or many defense roles. Or in the development of new hardware. But it's pretty niche.