3 ms·

Having fpgas on-board feels like something that would have been a game-changer even pre-ai. Imagine if your Ryzen chip could do hardware encode/decode of h266 t

Having fpgas on-board feels like something that would have been a game-changer even pre-ai. Imagine if your Ryzen chip could do hardware encode/decode of h266 the moment the spec was finalized.

rektide 3y ago
I can't find evidence it really made it out to consumers, & even less evidence there was any followup, but Intel did have a Xeon + Arria 10 GX FPGA chip, back in 2018: Xeon Gold 6138P with Arria 10 FPGA. https://www.anandtech.com/show/12773/intel-shows-xeon-scalable-gold-6138p-with-integrated-fpga-shipping-to-vendors https://www.anandtech.com/show/12773/intel-shows-xeon-scalab... At the hyperscaler level there's been a lot of adoption of SmartNICs, which are often FPGA based. That makes me feel like there's a pretty big market here already for integrated FPGAs. I think the other requirement is that these FPGAs need to be made broadly available if we're going to see a real shift. Selling a couple many-thousand-dollar high end chips isn't going to create new audiences clamboring for these things, which is required for the tech to actually get interesting & well adopted, instead of existing only in a small but important niche.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
  Follow-on question, what makes FPGAs so dang expensive?
  - Melkman 3y ago
    Size, speed, features. You can have a small FPGA for about 2$. You will however be limited in the complexity of the design you can implement because it has limited gates and pins. And limited speed. Like normal processors if you want faster, bigger and more features the cost shoots up. Combine that with the limited market for big FPGA's and they can be very high in price. Mind you that many also have things like a multi core ARM processor on board since many designs need a processor to control the circuit. Same with many interfaces. Would be a shame to use the limited gates in the FPGA for standard things like that.
  - zerohp 3y ago
    Large die area and low production volumes.
dirkt 3y ago
Bunnie Huang already built himself a laptop with on-board FPGA back in 2012. [1] https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=2686 https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=2686 [2] https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=3597 https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=3597

Having fpgas on-board feels like something that would have been a game-changer even pre-ai. Imagine if your Ryzen chip could do hardware encode/decode of h266 the moment the spec was finalized.

rektide 3y ago

I can't find evidence it really made it out to consumers, & even less evidence there was any followup, but Intel did have a Xeon + Arria 10 GX FPGA chip, back in 2018: Xeon Gold 6138P with Arria 10 FPGA. https://www.anandtech.com/show/12773/intel-shows-xeon-scalable-gold-6138p-with-integrated-fpga-shipping-to-vendors https://www.anandtech.com/show/12773/intel-shows-xeon-scalab... At the hyperscaler level there's been a lot of adoption of SmartNICs, which are often FPGA based. That makes me feel like there's a pretty big market here already for integrated FPGAs. I think the other requirement is that these FPGAs need to be made broadly available if we're going to see a real shift. Selling a couple many-thousand-dollar high end chips isn't going to create new audiences clamboring for these things, which is required for the tech to actually get interesting & well adopted, instead of existing only in a small but important niche.

2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
Follow-on question, what makes FPGAs so dang expensive?
- Melkman 3y ago
  Size, speed, features. You can have a small FPGA for about 2$. You will however be limited in the complexity of the design you can implement because it has limited gates and pins. And limited speed. Like normal processors if you want faster, bigger and more features the cost shoots up. Combine that with the limited market for big FPGA's and they can be very high in price. Mind you that many also have things like a multi core ARM processor on board since many designs need a processor to control the circuit. Same with many interfaces. Would be a shame to use the limited gates in the FPGA for standard things like that.
- zerohp 3y ago
  Large die area and low production volumes.

dirkt 3y ago

Bunnie Huang already built himself a laptop with on-board FPGA back in 2012. [1] https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=2686 https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=2686 [2] https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=3597 https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=3597