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I'm hoping/expecting a chip that goes into the Epyc/SP3 socket and has the memory & PCIe & socket crossconnect as hard IP but the CPU cores replaced with progra

I'm hoping/expecting a chip that goes into the Epyc/SP3 socket and has the memory & PCIe & socket crossconnect as hard IP but the CPU cores replaced with programmable logic. If you have a use case for FPGAs, it's more likely you want it in a concentrated form like this... not on low-end or desktop systems :/ If I remember correctly, there was something similar back in the early HyperTransport days...

hderms 6y ago
Are you envisioning retaining at least a few cores? It seems like you'd probably still want an OS running on native silicon.
- detaro 6y ago
  I assume they are thinking about a design for multi-socket systems.
  - eqvinox 6y ago
    Yeah I think it's both more effective and cheaper to have dual/quad socket systems with 1 "normal" CPU and the rest filled with FPGAs without CPU cores, just to max out on the raw crunching ability. The PCIe block on the FPGA chips could be flexible enough to (re-?)wire directly into the programmable logic, maybe even reconfigurable to other protocols (e.g. 100GE). Also in "normal" NUMA fashion each FPGA would have the memory channels associated with that socket (presumably through the interconnect as if it were a CPU, so the CPU can access it too.) I'm just looking at this from a logical chain of "who needs FPGAs in their computers?" => "cases with loooots of specific data crunching" => "want a controlling/driving CPU for the complicated parts, but then just concentrate as much FPGA in as possible." => Multi-socket with 1 CPU & rest FPGAs. (There currently is no commodity Quad-socket SP3 mainboard, not sure if this is a design limitation or just no one made one yet? I'd still say the approach works great with only 2 sockets.)
    - zrm 6y ago
      I wouldn't expect to see anything like this on SP3 anyway, since it would take some time to do the work and by then the current generation would likely be whatever they replace SP3 with in order to support DDR5.
einpoklum 6y ago
Well, you want something more low-end for developers' and hobbyists' machines, I would guess.
- eqvinox 6y ago
  As much as I agree with you and want one for myself too, I doubt that this market segment is interesting to AMD at all. The kinds of workloads that warrant going FPGA are the kind of workloads where you just give your devs a bunch of high-priced development systems. Those would likely be close to identical to the production boxes, just with more debug pieces plugged in.

hderms 6y ago

Are you envisioning retaining at least a few cores? It seems like you'd probably still want an OS running on native silicon.

detaro 6y ago
I assume they are thinking about a design for multi-socket systems.
- eqvinox 6y ago
  Yeah I think it's both more effective and cheaper to have dual/quad socket systems with 1 "normal" CPU and the rest filled with FPGAs without CPU cores, just to max out on the raw crunching ability. The PCIe block on the FPGA chips could be flexible enough to (re-?)wire directly into the programmable logic, maybe even reconfigurable to other protocols (e.g. 100GE). Also in "normal" NUMA fashion each FPGA would have the memory channels associated with that socket (presumably through the interconnect as if it were a CPU, so the CPU can access it too.) I'm just looking at this from a logical chain of "who needs FPGAs in their computers?" => "cases with loooots of specific data crunching" => "want a controlling/driving CPU for the complicated parts, but then just concentrate as much FPGA in as possible." => Multi-socket with 1 CPU & rest FPGAs. (There currently is no commodity Quad-socket SP3 mainboard, not sure if this is a design limitation or just no one made one yet? I'd still say the approach works great with only 2 sockets.)
  - zrm 6y ago
    I wouldn't expect to see anything like this on SP3 anyway, since it would take some time to do the work and by then the current generation would likely be whatever they replace SP3 with in order to support DDR5.

einpoklum 6y ago

Well, you want something more low-end for developers' and hobbyists' machines, I would guess.

eqvinox 6y ago
As much as I agree with you and want one for myself too, I doubt that this market segment is interesting to AMD at all. The kinds of workloads that warrant going FPGA are the kind of workloads where you just give your devs a bunch of high-priced development systems. Those would likely be close to identical to the production boxes, just with more debug pieces plugged in.