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Silly idea: could they put a M-series processor connected to a Xeon as a coprocessor to get the “benefits” of both wrt. adding their NPU stuff? Would that even

by girvo 4y ago

Silly idea: could they put a M-series processor connected to a Xeon as a coprocessor to get the “benefits” of both wrt. adding their NPU stuff? Would that even make any sense?

yywwbbn 4y ago
Would that be very useful if you can have a discrete GPU?
mark_undoio 4y ago
Hardware level stuff is a bit lower than my area but... The two tricky things I'd anticipate are: What does it look like to hardware? Different CPUs speak different protocols to maintain a cache coherent view of memory. So they couldn't easily share memory in a completely natural way - but GPUs manage to share memory between host and GPU, so it can be done (just not necessarily as conveniently to software). What does it look like to software? Lots of weird options here. Most convenient for software compatibility is it the Intel is also somehow running MacOS (or appears to be). I guess you could do that - it'd be like having a two node cluster in one machine. But that's not as convenient as being able to distribute computation between compatible CPUs. None of that is a complete technical blocker to a company that controls their stack, I'd just guess it would make it too inconvenient / expensive for them to do. That said - as an intern, years ago, I once had access to a piece of prototype hardware that had an x86 chip in one motherboard CPU socket and a non-x86 chip in the other (with various adaptation hardware to allow them to play nice). I think that was more a proof of concept than anything else, not necessarily viable without other hardware changes. Interesting nonetheless.
coredog64 4y ago
Sun used to sell PCI cards with a complete Intel computer on them. You'd use your Sun workstation for the hard stuff, and then you'd let the P3/Celeron running Win2k handle Outlook or whatever other Win32-only software you needed. I saw a lot of new-in-box examples cheap on eBay prior to Sun's implosion, so I suspect they weren't particularly popular and were primarily targeted at a few important customers that had some box to tick.
mijkal 4y ago
Once upon a time, Apple shipped a few models with both Motorola PPC + Intel x86 CPUs. Eg: https://everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_quadra/specs/mac_quadra_610.html https://everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_quadra/specs/mac_quad...
- girvo 4y ago
  Funnily enough, that's what I had in mind when I asked! Other companies have done similar in the past, though with modern chips, chipsets and protocols/timing requirements on lines, I think it might be more difficult?

by girvo 4y ago

Silly idea: could they put a M-series processor connected to a Xeon as a coprocessor to get the “benefits” of both wrt. adding their NPU stuff? Would that even make any sense?

yywwbbn 4y ago

Would that be very useful if you can have a discrete GPU?

mark_undoio 4y ago

Hardware level stuff is a bit lower than my area but... The two tricky things I'd anticipate are: What does it look like to hardware? Different CPUs speak different protocols to maintain a cache coherent view of memory. So they couldn't easily share memory in a completely natural way - but GPUs manage to share memory between host and GPU, so it can be done (just not necessarily as conveniently to software). What does it look like to software? Lots of weird options here. Most convenient for software compatibility is it the Intel is also somehow running MacOS (or appears to be). I guess you could do that - it'd be like having a two node cluster in one machine. But that's not as convenient as being able to distribute computation between compatible CPUs. None of that is a complete technical blocker to a company that controls their stack, I'd just guess it would make it too inconvenient / expensive for them to do. That said - as an intern, years ago, I once had access to a piece of prototype hardware that had an x86 chip in one motherboard CPU socket and a non-x86 chip in the other (with various adaptation hardware to allow them to play nice). I think that was more a proof of concept than anything else, not necessarily viable without other hardware changes. Interesting nonetheless.

coredog64 4y ago

Sun used to sell PCI cards with a complete Intel computer on them. You'd use your Sun workstation for the hard stuff, and then you'd let the P3/Celeron running Win2k handle Outlook or whatever other Win32-only software you needed. I saw a lot of new-in-box examples cheap on eBay prior to Sun's implosion, so I suspect they weren't particularly popular and were primarily targeted at a few important customers that had some box to tick.

mijkal 4y ago

Once upon a time, Apple shipped a few models with both Motorola PPC + Intel x86 CPUs. Eg: https://everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_quadra/specs/mac_quadra_610.html https://everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_quadra/specs/mac_quad...

girvo 4y ago
Funnily enough, that's what I had in mind when I asked! Other companies have done similar in the past, though with modern chips, chipsets and protocols/timing requirements on lines, I think it might be more difficult?