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I've been reading about the Mill for many years now and was fascinated by many of their ideas. However, the more deeply I learn about the details of how CPUs an
by atq2119 5y ago
I've been reading about the Mill for many years now and was fascinated by many of their ideas. However, the more deeply I learn about the details of how CPUs and GPUs work, the more I'm convinced that we're not going to see the kind of paradigm shift that they're touting.
They have some cool ideas, but many are incompatible with existing software, e.g. all the memory protection stuff. Other ideas like how memory loads work could be integrated (and have been in place in GPUs for a long time, though not in CPUs) but still depend on compiler changes, which presumably they've done, but past experience with hardware projects that rely on compiler changes is that the compiler changes aren't performing well enough in practice. Or perhaps compilers improve so slowly that traditional architectures can easily absorb the ideas in time.
Another example is that Apple's M1 proves that wider frontends are possible in traditional architectures, as long as the instruction size is fixed. There's no particular reason to believe that the Mill would be inherently better at this than a traditional architecture.
If you have a lay person's interest in hardware architecture and haven't looked at their docs yet, do so. The ideas will likely tickle your brain in a good way -- they did for me. But don't expect much, if anything, from them in production.
- h0l0cube 5y ago> past experience with hardware projects that rely on compiler changes is that the compiler changes aren't performing well enough in practice. > Another example is that Apple's M1 proves that wider frontends are possible in traditional architectures, as long as the instruction size is fixed. Doesn't the M1 prove that you can transpile code from one architecture to another and gain performance benefits? As in, Rosetta code works at comparable or better speed at far lower power consumption?
- sitkack 5y agoDynamic Binary Translation was shown effective back in the 90s https://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/1999/HPL-1999-77.html https://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/1999/HPL-1999-77.html
- tyingq 5y agoTransmeta is another example.
- analognoise 5y agoIf I remember right, the thing that stopped people in their tracks was patents, not necessarily technology.
- jlokier 5y agoIndeed, it may not be a coincidence that the M1 was released about the same time as Transmeta's patents expired.
- monocasa 5y agoIt wouldn't have been Transmeta's patents, but older ones. IBM's DAISY and HP's Dynamo stand out, but there are probably even older examples depending on what exactly is being patented. The original Rosetta used the same underlying tech with the exception of the memory model stuff, but Transmeta never had to deal with that since they only handled single cores. (And Sparc shipped TSO/WMO switch from a control register all the way back in the mid 90s).
- sitkack 5y agoFX!32 predates Rosetta. I don't think Transmeta's patents stopped any innovation here. I think it has more to do with technical difficult and social and political issues within an org. The fact that Apple has pulled off an ISA change multiple times is quit e amazing. Programmer's got cut off from the microcode starting in the 80s, had this not been the case, I think we would have seen more activity lower in the stack. ISA lockin is a much smaller issue now. DAISY https://www.microarch.org/micro33/tutorial/tutorial.html https://www.microarch.org/micro33/tutorial/tutorial.html FX!32 http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.23.2907 http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.23.2...
- 5y ago
- magicalhippo 5y agoWhile I'm also feel a mix of enthusiasm and skepticism, I feel it would be a shame for the Mill team not to have a proper shot at getting to hardware. To see if it, against the odds, can provide some significant benefit or not. The proof is in the pudding, I hope they get to make the pudding.
- bcrl 5y agoA poor hardware implementation would do more harm for their prospects than no hardware implementation.
- calmd 5y agoTheir ideas will become more widespread but it may be done by a different team at this point.
- monocasa 5y agoNot for 17 years since their patents go up to 2018.
- thesz 5y agoThe very RISC paradigm relied on compiler change. The change happened, but not as fast as we would like it to.