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Going through a formal CS program will give you an intimate understanding of CPUs Please tell me you forgot the /s. I have a PhD in computer engineering from
by p1esk 3y ago
Going through a formal CS program will give you an intimate understanding of CPUs
Please tell me you forgot the /s.
I have a PhD in computer engineering from a top-20 school in US. Took a bunch of grad level classes, passed the quals (my specialty was ML accelerators).
I do NOT have an “intimate understanding of CPUs”. I probably know a little bit more about CPUs than an average programmer. Which is very little.
Modern CPUs are extremely complex. Almost as much of impenetrable black boxes as modern neural networks.
- gmadsen 3y agoI think the intention of the phrase, is that most cs programs include a systems course. you will learn von neumann arch, with cpu including {registers, clock, ALUs, etc}. Obviously modern CPUs have a lot more complexity, but even the basic coverage of CPUs is more coverage than GPUS.
- p1esk 3y agoEverything you learn about CPUs in your CS undergrad program is applicable to GPUs. Both are examples of von Neumann architecture, both have registers, ALUs, ISA, instruction schedulers, cache hierarchy, external DRAM, etc. The main difference is how they are being used - GPU, while a general purpose computer, is typically used as an accelerator for specific workloads, and it needs CPU to function. The distinction between the two is getting blurred as GPUs get better at executing control flows, and CPUs get more cores and wider vector operations.