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A New Golden Age for Computer Architecture
- 4thaccount 8y agoI'm trying to think of what are some neat computer architectures out there. Chuck Moore's "Green Arrays" is kinda cool and so is the Parallela board.
- mpweiher 8y agoTransputer. Hardware multitasking and link-communication and a very compact instruction set. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transputer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transputer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XCore_Architecture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XCore_Architecture SOAR (Smalltalk On A RISC), though the conclusion there was mostly that a plain old RISC will do. I wonder if that is still true today. Rekursiv OO computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rekursiv https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rekursiv NEC dataflow processor. https://books.google.de/books?id=qRrlBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA152&lpg=PA152&dq=NEC+7281&source=bl&ots=eI51Z6P4Ao&sig=ACfU3U0sFs_dluKsnjoORUk5RHGVX1UytQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiDm8mv2ZLgAhUN3qQKHQHgBqQQ6AEwCXoECAIQAQ#v=onepage&q=NEC%207281&f=false https://books.google.de/books?id=qRrlBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA152&lpg=P...
- 4thaccount 8y agoNever heard of SOAR. It would be pretty sweet though to have a powerful & multi-core chip running a Smalltalk OS that could do something with all the cores. I'd also like to see kOS from Arthur Whitney if he ever finishes it, although I'd never be able to afford any of their products.
- mpweiher 8y agohttps://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/1986/CSD-86-287.pdf https://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/1986/CSD-86-287... https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/association-for-computing-machinery/soar-smalltalk-without-bytecodes-dMyiYUWgIr https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/association-for-computing-machin... http://digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/techreports/ucb/text/ERL-85-48.pdf http://digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/techreports/ucb/text/E... Looking at the results, they say that hardware tag-checking for integer arithmetic and register windows for fast method calls were the two most important features of the design, nearly doubling performance. I wonder if that still holds today, with the memory wall so dominant that CPUs tend to be stalled quite a bit (therefore enough time to do tag checking in software).
- jabl 8y agoNowadays the thinking seems to be that register windows were a mistake (e.g. in SPARC), and newer designs such as RISC-V or Aarch64 don't do it.
- foobiekr 8y agoI don't think I'd call the transputer "hardware multitasking" so much as "integrated communications network." For a time the T800 was the top of the FP pile. Not for long, though, and then the long, long, long wait for the disappointing T9k doomed the whole architecture.
- mpweiher 8y ago>I don't think I'd call the transputer "hardware multitasking" "A Transputer had a number of simple operating system functions built into the hardware. These included hardware multitasking with foreground and background priority levels, hardware timers, and hardware time-slicing of background tasks." The Hardware and Software Architecture of the Transputer -- https://archive.org/details/Xputer https://archive.org/details/Xputer There are special instruction to start and end a process, and the fact that it was a stack machine means context switches were extremely fast, almost no registers to save/restore. > so much as "integrated communications network." It had both, and both were integrated. IIRC, the instructions to send/receive on the links were integrated with the multitasking hardware. "The first 16 'secondary' zero-operand instructions (using the OPR primary instruction) were: Mnemonic Description REV Reverse – swap two top items of register stack LB Load byte BSUB Byte subscript ENDP End process DIFF Difference ADD Add GCALL General Call – swap top of stack and instruction pointer IN Input – receive message PROD Product GT Greater Than – the only comparison instruction WSUB Word subscript OUT Output – send message SUB Subtract STARTP Start process OUTBYTE Output byte – send one-byte message OUTWORD Output word – send one-word message" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transputer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transputer Also, you could designate memory locations as local communications channels, and the same instructions would work. So the same binary could run locally or distributed.
- foobiekr 8y agoThis manual is a great find! Thank you.
- agumonkey 8y agoI need a group for this .. I love forth array cpus
- 4thaccount 8y agoI just wish I could figure out how to use the green arrays
- deadpool007 8y agoI am getting application error while opening the link. Anybody facing the same issue?
- ranchpredictor 8y agoAlot of what they suggest seem to be better solved in the domain of compilers and microcode translation on the fly.
- robin_reala 8y ago– As announced by Intel on the launch of the new Itanium architecture.
- shifto 8y agooh snap
- ranchpredictor 8y agoSlow clap
- Symmetry 8y agoQuite possibly! Or maybe at install or link time. Or maybe we're looking at a future where almost all code goes through a JIT engine and you've only got a few normal cores that run the OS that manages everything. Or possible everything will be Javascript[1]. [1]https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death-of-javascript https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death....
- insulanian 8y agoI remember being excited about The Machine [1] from HP: "The Machine will be a complete replacement for current computer system architectures. There will be a new operating system, a new type of memory (memristors), and super-fast buses/peripheral interconnects (photonics)." "HP says it will commercialize The Machine within a few years, “or fall on its face trying.”" It seems later happened... [1] https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/184165-hp-bets-it-all-on-the-machine-a-new-computer-architecture-based-on-memristors-and-silicon-photonics https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/184165-hp-bets-it-all-on...
- DJBunnies 8y agoLater always happens.
- insulanian 8y agoSorry for the typo :)
- na412 8y agoHP long ago rebranded "The Machine" to be just a powerful regular computer, since they haven't been successful in making viable memristors at scale. So they will deliver it, it just won't be anything like what they promised.
- akshayn 8y agoWhile HP's "The Machine" specifically appears to never have gone beyond the marketing phase, I think your excitement about the underlying technologies - silicon photonics combined with nonvolative memory combined with resource disaggregation - is valid [0], and they are probably coming. You can buy NVM today [1], and building systems for resource disaggregation work is an active problem [2]. [0] https://www.usenix.org/conference/fast14/technical-sessions/presentation/keynote https://www.usenix.org/conference/fast14/technical-sessions/... [1] https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/memory-storage/solid-state-drives/gaming-enthusiast-ssds/optane-905p-series/905p-960gb-2-5inch.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/memory-stor... [2] https://www.usenix.org/system/files/osdi18-shan.pdf https://www.usenix.org/system/files/osdi18-shan.pdf
- cbkeller 8y agoInteresting article with a lot of great historical context. I think a significant part of the tl;dr is that the end of Dennard Scaling and trouble with Moore's law may mean that the best architecture will finally win out, rather than just the one with the best semiconductor design team behind it. I'm a bit skeptical of the promise of DSAs, though it does seem we're already going that way. Curious what others think on that point.
- gbrown_ 8y agoI agree, my concern is where do DSAs go in a few generations? How many efficiency/performance gains can be had before hitting the same limits hampering general purpose processors today?
- Symmetry 8y agoA DSA is only going to be an order of magnitude or two more performant than a general computer on any given process node. They'll certainly slow down at the same time general purpose CPUs slow down. The thing is it makes more sense to design and include them in a world where transistors are potentially getting cheaper without getting better because a finite amount of engineering effort will be stretched across a longer timeframe.
- vanderZwan 8y agoDoes that also imply a potential power savings of an order of magnitude or two? Because then it becomes a lot more obvious that the demand for them will be there in mobile phones and laptops at least.
- Symmetry 8y agoYes, it does. And that's a big part of the push for dedicated co-processors that we've seen in SoCs.
- Symmetry 8y agoThe article didn't well on Dark Silicon but the idea is that as you can fit more structures on a chip but can't light up them all for power dissipation reasons it makes sense to include more and more specialized structures you only use for some purposes. With the rise of GPUs and specialized co-processor for things like media decoding and encryption we're certainly well on our way there. It would be nice to have an intermediate between the two in more places, like the Hexagon VLIW DSP that Qualcomm puts in its Snapdragon DSPs. And of course there are the even more specialized matrix convolution processors that everybody is designing and NVidia is now putting in its GPU. I think the real question is if it will make sense to have FPGAs in wider use. Certainly not until the programming model improves...
- simula67 8y ago> Today, 99% of 32-bit and 64-bit processors are RISC > Concluding this historical review, we can say the marketplace settled the RISC-CISC debate; CISC won the later stages of the PC era, but RISC is winning the post-PC era It is clear that his assessment is right, but isn't the 99% number too high ? Servers, laptops and desktops still run x86 and they are CISC ( unless you are counting x86 as RISC based on microcode ) > Many researchers assume they must stop short because fabricating chips is unaffordable. When designs are small, they are surprisingly inexpensive. > High-level, domain-specific languages and architectures, freeing architects from the chains of proprietary instruction sets, along with demand from the public for improved security, will usher in a new golden age for computer architects. Aided by open source ecosystems, agilely developed chips will convincingly demonstrate advances and thereby accelerate commercial adoption. It will be interesting if manufacturing also gets open sourced. There already seems to be a project attempting this : http://libresilicon.com/ http://libresilicon.com/
- pjc50 8y ago> agilely developed chips I feel there's a long way to go there. The economic structure of the industry is against agility because "deployment" remains stubbornly expensive, and the product culture is also much more conservative. > manufacturing also gets open sourced. It's one of the most capital-intensive industries in the world, so I don't quite see how this would work? Libresilicon are offering a 1000nm (not a typo) process.
- grkvlt 8y agoYeah, it's like open sourcing code for 3D immersive visualisation of deep-water seismic survey data, along with the detailed blueprints for the ROV and survey equipment. Awesome enough, sure, but pretty much useless to me. I can build the software like a boss on my laptop, but since I don't have access to any seismic survey data, a CAVE room to view it in, an oceanographic survey vessel, ROV and associated equipment, etc. that's as good as it gets. And, if I had all that awesome oil industry exploration stuff, I'd probably also have a team of engineers building me software anyway, so I don't need it. My point? Open sourcing stuff with ridiculously huge capital requirements is not that useful, I guess?
- ChucklesNorris 8y agoI think back to the old Cat Stevens song "I Want To Live In A Wigwam", except now I think maybe one day I'd like to live in a Faraday cage. Computers, like guns, drugs, and any other invention of man are not inherently evil. All these things can be used for good or evil. Unfortunately, the fly in the ointment is human nature. With the convergence of cheaper but increased computing power and the monetization of personal information, I fear what the future holds. I hope I'm wrong, but it looks to me that humanity is doomed to forever live in a state total surveillance and control. We're seeing it happening already. Just the other day I saw an article that said that Sweden is going to tax people on the miles they drive. The very next day I saw another article saying Los Angeles is planning to do the same thing. Sigh... I'm glad I'm old.
- mav3rick 8y agoThis fear mongering goes on since the days of Henry Ford. Technology has been a boon for many many people. I can't imagine a world with many more people dying or without access to information.
- 3chelon 8y agoIndeed, since the days of the Gutenberg press. All new tech heralds the end of times.
- robin_reala 8y agoEvery country already taxes people on the miles they drive, as every country has a fuel tax.
- jakamau 8y agoA fuel tax isn't effectively a tax on mileage, nor is it an effective tax for offsetting infrastructure costs. An increase in axle weight causes an exponential increase in damage to infrastructure (the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials uses a "fourth-power" rule). Increased fuel economy also has unintended consequences leading to fuel taxes under-funding the infrastructure repairs. You essentially have heavy-duty or commercial trucks that don't "pay their weigh" and hyper efficient hybrids and EVs that don't "pay their way" when it comes to infrastructure costs. So fuel tax isn't equivalent to a tax on "miles driven," it might be better suited to off-setting air pollution (pure conjecture on my part), but if you wanted everyone to be responsible for the damage they cause to public infrastructure, you would need some weird calculus of axle-weight/mile driven tax. Or we could decide major roads/infrastructure are an economic public good worthy of paying taxes on.
- gbrown_ 8y agoI'd hardly call this a "Golden Age", precisely because of the shortcomings mentioned in the article. Regardless of how you may re-architect a processor you will still end up hitting CMOS limitations in time. To contrast my fantasy for "Golden Age" would be multiple viable replacements for CMOS that were actively being used in a variety of processors.
- pjc50 8y agoWhat specifically is "wrong" with CMOS? Not small enough for you yet? :)
- ansible 8y agoReaching "the end of Moore's Law" is a super big deal, and I still don't understand why people aren't worried about it more in general. It will cause a crash in the entire tech industry, which will throw the global economy into a depression.
- ghaff 8y agoNot sure why the downvotes whether or not you take this outcome as a given. CMOS process scaling has been a uniquely powerful driver of the tech industry since circa the 1990s. It’s not obvious how you lose that and don’t have an impact. We’ve gotten a bit of a reprieve because things like GPUs turn out to be good architectures for many compute intensive workloads.
- wibble10 8y agoHow will reaching the end of Moore’s law cause a crash like this? Do you mean that future requirements will outstrip capacity? I don’t think this has been true for some time, we run a lot more systems and tend to scale horizontally; doubling compute power every n period isn’t a hard requirement imo.
- ghaff 8y agoWithout higher throughput systems including but not limited to CPUs, you can to some degree just throw more servers at the problem. But now you’ve doubled (maybe more like tripled) the cost to get 2x the performance. And some applications like mobile and sensors depend on miniaturization for a given capability.
- ddingus 8y agoReading this, I had a flash of a question: RISC makes a lot of sense given compilers and many other possible optimizations? However, there are increasing trends to put functions right into silicon too. Those frequently replace many instructions. Will ML tech somehow make better sense of those things, and CISC in general?
- vanderZwan 8y ago> As the architects of the Motorola 68000 and iAPX-432 both learned, the marketplace is rarely patient. I hope this won't mean the Mill has no chance of success, or at least influencing the industry for the better. Every video seems to introduce interesting new ideas, or new takes on old ideas[0]. https://millcomputing.com/ https://millcomputing.com/
- rblion 8y agoIt really is a fascinating time to be alive and aware. The power of computing is redefining civilization, humanity.
- Antonio123123 8y ago>Using parallel loops running on many cores yields a factor of approximately 7. That depends on the number of cores.