8 ms·

I recommend watching the Turing Award speech by Patterson and Hennessey which covers this topic. Spoiler: the way out is "Domain Specific Architectures". http

by trimbo 7y ago

I recommend watching the Turing Award speech by Patterson and Hennessey which covers this topic. Spoiler: the way out is "Domain Specific Architectures". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LVeEjsn8Ts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LVeEjsn8Ts

tambourine_man 7y ago
Which is sad, in a way. There was something amazing about a general purpose computer that next generations may not be able to appreciate.
- kec 7y ago
  That's a bit like saying it's sad that cpus added media instructions, or that the gpu was invented. Dedicating silicon to fixed tasks or task specific designs can lead to massive performance increases and in no way means the death of general purpose compute.
  - tambourine_man 7y ago
    And it is, in a way. At least to me. Would you rather have a burnt on silicon algorithm for video/encryption decoding or a 10X faster general purpose CPU that can do that and everything else?
    - kec 7y ago
      I think you underestimate just how much faster and more energy efficient hardware acceleration can make certain tasks, the savings can be far in excess of 10x.
      - tambourine_man 7y ago
        You may underestimate the exponential function :) We where doubling our performance every year or two. For decades.
        erikpukinskis 7y ago
        We were also watching 160x240 video clips.
        imtringued 7y ago
        That doubling applies to any sillicon circuit, not just CPUs.
        tambourine_man 7y ago
        Of course it does, and your point is?
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- tempguy9999 7y ago
  General purpose chips aren't going to disappear, not even slightly. They're just going to offload specific work to circuitry that it's best suited for. I regret we're about to hit the wall but I have long though that we're going to start moving back to analogue, and probabilistic algorithms, and in one way, having half-width floats is a step in that direction. I expect it to go further. (All this is my opinion and may be wrong).
  - tambourine_man 7y ago
    Sure, but you might end up with computers for video editing, computers for DNA sequencing, etc. And we are already there for some workloads. AI and crypto mining come to mind. Regardless, buying a fast computer that could do anything was really fun.
    - sgt101 7y ago
      I think you will see SOC's that have multiple specialised architectures, which will be lit up intelligently by the CPU depending on what the workload is.
  - joquarky 7y ago
    > They're just going to offload specific work to circuitry that it's best suited for. Like the Amiga? That actually worked out pretty well. I look forward to it.
    - tambourine_man 7y ago
      Pow’s law at work here for me https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law
- silversconfused 7y ago
  It was all a marketing illusion to sell pentium chips and windows licenses. Bittersweet to see it go, as it was a great time to start being a technician and I certainly personally benefited from it. We're on the way back to using the Right Tool For The Job now, and that's probably better for everyone. Workloads are unique, just like people.
fulafel 7y ago
The problem with this is the likely fragmentation of the programming languages and tool support. Eg GPUs have been around for ~25 years and there's still no decent way to portably program them. We have Metal, Direct3D, OpenGL, OpenCL, Cuda, Vulkan, ... all of which have small market shares. It's markedly worse than microprocessors at 25. (Not even getting into quality issues like driver quality problems and the closed&proprietary nature of most of the SW stacks).

by trimbo 7y ago

tambourine_man 7y ago

Which is sad, in a way. There was something amazing about a general purpose computer that next generations may not be able to appreciate.

kec 7y ago
That's a bit like saying it's sad that cpus added media instructions, or that the gpu was invented. Dedicating silicon to fixed tasks or task specific designs can lead to massive performance increases and in no way means the death of general purpose compute.
- tambourine_man 7y ago
  And it is, in a way. At least to me. Would you rather have a burnt on silicon algorithm for video/encryption decoding or a 10X faster general purpose CPU that can do that and everything else?
  - kec 7y ago
    I think you underestimate just how much faster and more energy efficient hardware acceleration can make certain tasks, the savings can be far in excess of 10x.
    - tambourine_man 7y ago
      You may underestimate the exponential function :) We where doubling our performance every year or two. For decades.
      - erikpukinskis 7y ago
        We were also watching 160x240 video clips.
      - imtringued 7y ago
        That doubling applies to any sillicon circuit, not just CPUs.
        tambourine_man 7y ago
        Of course it does, and your point is?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
tempguy9999 7y ago
General purpose chips aren't going to disappear, not even slightly. They're just going to offload specific work to circuitry that it's best suited for. I regret we're about to hit the wall but I have long though that we're going to start moving back to analogue, and probabilistic algorithms, and in one way, having half-width floats is a step in that direction. I expect it to go further. (All this is my opinion and may be wrong).
- tambourine_man 7y ago
  Sure, but you might end up with computers for video editing, computers for DNA sequencing, etc. And we are already there for some workloads. AI and crypto mining come to mind. Regardless, buying a fast computer that could do anything was really fun.
  - sgt101 7y ago
    I think you will see SOC's that have multiple specialised architectures, which will be lit up intelligently by the CPU depending on what the workload is.
- joquarky 7y ago
  > They're just going to offload specific work to circuitry that it's best suited for. Like the Amiga? That actually worked out pretty well. I look forward to it.
  - tambourine_man 7y ago
    Pow’s law at work here for me https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law
silversconfused 7y ago
It was all a marketing illusion to sell pentium chips and windows licenses. Bittersweet to see it go, as it was a great time to start being a technician and I certainly personally benefited from it. We're on the way back to using the Right Tool For The Job now, and that's probably better for everyone. Workloads are unique, just like people.

fulafel 7y ago

The problem with this is the likely fragmentation of the programming languages and tool support. Eg GPUs have been around for ~25 years and there's still no decent way to portably program them. We have Metal, Direct3D, OpenGL, OpenCL, Cuda, Vulkan, ... all of which have small market shares. It's markedly worse than microprocessors at 25. (Not even getting into quality issues like driver quality problems and the closed&proprietary nature of most of the SW stacks).