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Not sure if you can call it a startup, but I think the work that GreenArrays ga144 multi-computer chips for embedded applications is very interesting. One of t

Not sure if you can call it a startup, but I think the work that GreenArrays ga144 multi-computer chips for embedded applications is very interesting. One of these days I'd like to get my hands on an evaluation board, but the price is a little steep. http://www.greenarraychips.com/index.html http://www.greenarraychips.com/index.html

whoisninja 6y ago
looks very interesting, could you help me understand it a bit more - i'm less aware about hardware side of tech. seems like it will allow very cheap multiprocessing? so applications could be gaming, scientific computing, ML? how does it compare to new AMD chips that have 32 or 64 cores or let's say GPUs? in terms of cost and speed? found this to be interesting as well: https://www.parallella.org/board/ https://www.parallella.org/board/ helpful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massively_parallel_processor_array https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massively_parallel_processor_a...
- frompdx 6y ago
  The things that are of greatest interest to me: - No clock. Everything is asynchronous instead. This reduces power consumption. - Forth based processors. arrayForth is intended to be the first class development tool for the chip (according to this site http://www.ultratechnology.com/chips.htm http://www.ultratechnology.com/chips.htm). Some of the applications are covered in this pdf: http://www.greenarraychips.com/home/documents/greg/PB002-100822-GA-Arch.pdf http://www.greenarraychips.com/home/documents/greg/PB002-100... > so applications could be gaming, scientific computing, ML? I think this chip is most useful for embedded applications that demand low power consumption and parallel or distributed processing. The brochure indicates that AI/neural nets are a possible application. > how does it compare to new AMD chips that have 32 or 64 cores or let's say GPUs? Much slower but also much less expensive in terms of cost and energy consumption. The AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X can do 2,356,230 MIPS at 4.35 GHz while the ga144 can do around 700 (see http://www.greenarraychips.com/home/documents/greg/WP002-100405-energycons.pdf http://www.greenarraychips.com/home/documents/greg/WP002-100...). The threadripper is $3500 while the ga144 is only $10 (with a minimum order of 20 chips). Some casual google suggests the threadripper will use 400 or so watts under heavy load. This article about the ga144 says: > and even with all 144 cores running and a peak aggregate performance of 96 billion operations/second, power consumption is only 650 milliwatts. https://www.rs-online.com/designspark/hands-on-with-a-144-core-processor https://www.rs-online.com/designspark/hands-on-with-a-144-co... Here is a white paper from GA that discusses power consumption: http://www.greenarraychips.com/home/documents/greg/WP002-100405-energycons.pdf http://www.greenarraychips.com/home/documents/greg/WP002-100... The threadripper can do more MIPS per watt, but it comes at the cost of needing around 120 watts when idle while the ga144 hardly uses any. The white paper says each processor uses 100 nanowatts while idle. So I suppose that adds up to 0.0144 milliwatts while idle if every node is activated. For me, I think the ga144 presents an opportunity to create very low power event driven portable devices. I think that is an interesting territory to explore, but I don't have any immediate uses in mind.
  - whoisninja 6y ago
    very insightful, thanks for answering all my questions..... seems like you know your stuff well

whoisninja 6y ago

looks very interesting, could you help me understand it a bit more - i'm less aware about hardware side of tech. seems like it will allow very cheap multiprocessing? so applications could be gaming, scientific computing, ML? how does it compare to new AMD chips that have 32 or 64 cores or let's say GPUs? in terms of cost and speed? found this to be interesting as well: https://www.parallella.org/board/ https://www.parallella.org/board/ helpful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massively_parallel_processor_array https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massively_parallel_processor_a...

frompdx 6y ago
The things that are of greatest interest to me: - No clock. Everything is asynchronous instead. This reduces power consumption. - Forth based processors. arrayForth is intended to be the first class development tool for the chip (according to this site http://www.ultratechnology.com/chips.htm http://www.ultratechnology.com/chips.htm). Some of the applications are covered in this pdf: http://www.greenarraychips.com/home/documents/greg/PB002-100822-GA-Arch.pdf http://www.greenarraychips.com/home/documents/greg/PB002-100... > so applications could be gaming, scientific computing, ML? I think this chip is most useful for embedded applications that demand low power consumption and parallel or distributed processing. The brochure indicates that AI/neural nets are a possible application. > how does it compare to new AMD chips that have 32 or 64 cores or let's say GPUs? Much slower but also much less expensive in terms of cost and energy consumption. The AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X can do 2,356,230 MIPS at 4.35 GHz while the ga144 can do around 700 (see http://www.greenarraychips.com/home/documents/greg/WP002-100405-energycons.pdf http://www.greenarraychips.com/home/documents/greg/WP002-100...). The threadripper is $3500 while the ga144 is only $10 (with a minimum order of 20 chips). Some casual google suggests the threadripper will use 400 or so watts under heavy load. This article about the ga144 says: > and even with all 144 cores running and a peak aggregate performance of 96 billion operations/second, power consumption is only 650 milliwatts. https://www.rs-online.com/designspark/hands-on-with-a-144-core-processor https://www.rs-online.com/designspark/hands-on-with-a-144-co... Here is a white paper from GA that discusses power consumption: http://www.greenarraychips.com/home/documents/greg/WP002-100405-energycons.pdf http://www.greenarraychips.com/home/documents/greg/WP002-100... The threadripper can do more MIPS per watt, but it comes at the cost of needing around 120 watts when idle while the ga144 hardly uses any. The white paper says each processor uses 100 nanowatts while idle. So I suppose that adds up to 0.0144 milliwatts while idle if every node is activated. For me, I think the ga144 presents an opportunity to create very low power event driven portable devices. I think that is an interesting territory to explore, but I don't have any immediate uses in mind.
- whoisninja 6y ago
  very insightful, thanks for answering all my questions..... seems like you know your stuff well