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GreenArrays have really cool chip that boasts "the most power efficient per instruction executed" when they released it. On the order of picojoules per cycle II

by aeonik 3y ago

GreenArrays have really cool chip that boasts "the most power efficient per instruction executed" when they released it. On the order of picojoules per cycle IIRC. The chip has 144 independent computers (not processors -> computers) The inventor of the Forth programming language, Chuck Moore, developed it, and is designed to execute with this parallel model in mind. A parallel Brainfuck system might be a cool project to port over to this platform. https://www.greenarraychips.com/ https://www.greenarraychips.com/ Here is a talk given at Strange Loop by Chuck: https://youtu.be/0PclgBd6_Zs?si=r8FqQo4LUvdFmHbd https://youtu.be/0PclgBd6_Zs?si=r8FqQo4LUvdFmHbd

jerf 3y ago
Yeah, I had that in mind when this idea jumped unbidden into my head. With something less blindlingly stupid than brainfuck, it's a legitimately interesting architecture. I fear between CPUs, GPUs, and the fact that apparently we're going straight to custom hardware for neural nets, there isn't a niche for this in our world. But there certainly is a parallel universe in which we went down this road instead starting circa the late 1970s, and in that universe it is the GPUs and custom neural net architectures that are facing the uphill battle because while they may be better at their task than the 2048 "conventional" CPU systems in that world, they have a hard time being better enough to justify the investment.
- aeonik 3y ago
  I did it, I took the plunge and just bought a dev board. You are definitely right on with regard to the custom hardware, but I still want want to experiment with it, and I'm pretty sure there will be good niches for such flexibility/low power operations. There are still a lot of problems that are solved/need solving in which neural nets are superfluous/overkill for (I think). I might try my hand at some DSP for radio or audio to start. I'll also think I'm gonna try their Forth implementation, I've never used it before, but it seems like a pretty neat language. Maybe Uiua stack/array programming would make for a better port down the line.

by aeonik 3y ago

jerf 3y ago

Yeah, I had that in mind when this idea jumped unbidden into my head. With something less blindlingly stupid than brainfuck, it's a legitimately interesting architecture. I fear between CPUs, GPUs, and the fact that apparently we're going straight to custom hardware for neural nets, there isn't a niche for this in our world. But there certainly is a parallel universe in which we went down this road instead starting circa the late 1970s, and in that universe it is the GPUs and custom neural net architectures that are facing the uphill battle because while they may be better at their task than the 2048 "conventional" CPU systems in that world, they have a hard time being better enough to justify the investment.

aeonik 3y ago
I did it, I took the plunge and just bought a dev board. You are definitely right on with regard to the custom hardware, but I still want want to experiment with it, and I'm pretty sure there will be good niches for such flexibility/low power operations. There are still a lot of problems that are solved/need solving in which neural nets are superfluous/overkill for (I think). I might try my hand at some DSP for radio or audio to start. I'll also think I'm gonna try their Forth implementation, I've never used it before, but it seems like a pretty neat language. Maybe Uiua stack/array programming would make for a better port down the line.