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Yes, generally one of the trends has been movement toward specialized coprocessors/accelerators. This was happening before the recent AI push and has picked up
by 7thpower 2y ago
Yes, generally one of the trends has been movement toward specialized coprocessors/accelerators. This was happening before the recent AI push and has picked up steam.
If you think of an SOC, the chip in your phone, more and more of the real estate is being dedicated to specialized compute (AI accelerators, GPUs, etc. vs general purpose compute (CPU).
At the enterprise scale, one of the big arguments NVIDIA has been making, beyond their value in the AI market, has been the value of moving massive, resource intense workloads from CPU to more specialized GPU acceleration. In return for the investment to move their workload, customers can get a massive increase in performance per watt/dollar.
There are some other factors at play in that example, and it may not always be true that the transistors/mm^2 is always lower, but I think it illustrates the overall point.
- merb 2y agoJavaScript accelerator would probably half the power consumption of the world. The problem is just, that as soon as it would have widespread usage it would probably already be too old.
- choilive 2y agoI believe ARM has some instructions that is JavaScript specific so we're kinda in that direction already.
- merb 2y agoYeah the https://developer.arm.com/documentation/dui0801/h/A64-Floating-point-Instructions/FJCVTZS https://developer.arm.com/documentation/dui0801/h/A64-Floati... but a full jit helper that is generalized is way way harder and as said will take a long time tobe generally available. Just look at wasmgc and that only has the minimum denominator.
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- zeusk 2y agoBack in the day, they supported byte code execution - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazelle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazelle
- robocat 2y agoReminiscent of the Java CPUs: Not even used for embedded (ironically the reason Java was created?). And not used at all by the massive Java compute needed for corporate software worldwide?
- crote 2y agoWeren't they used in Java Cards? Basically, every single credit card sized security chip (including actual credit cards, of course) is a small processor running Java applets. Pretty much everyone has one or more in their wallet. I'd assume those were actual Java CPUs directly executing bytecode?
- robocat 2y ago> Weren't they used in Java Cards? Not sure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_processor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_processor doesn't seem to mention any in current use. I am ignorant of the actual correct answer: I had simply presumed it is simpler to write the virtual machine using a commercial ISA than to develop a custom ISA. Java Card bytecode run by the Java Card Virtual Machine is a functional subset of Java 2 bytecode run by a standard Java Virtual Machine but with a different encoding to optimize for size. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Card_OpenPlatform https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Card_OpenPlatform has some history but nothing jumped out to answer your question.
- greenavocado 2y agopicoJava processors (Sun Microsystems) https://www.cnet.com/culture/sun-releases-complete-chip-design-for-free/ https://www.cnet.com/culture/sun-releases-complete-chip-desi... Patriot Scientific's Ignite processor family https://www.cpushack.com/2013/03/02/chuck-moore-part-2-from-space-to-greenarrays/ https://www.cpushack.com/2013/03/02/chuck-moore-part-2-from-... ARM Jazelle technology https://developer.arm.com/documentation/ddi0222/b/introduction/about-the-arm9ej-s-with-jazelle-technology https://developer.arm.com/documentation/ddi0222/b/introducti... https://www.eetimes.com/nazomi-offers-plug-in-java-accelerator-for-wireless-handsets/ https://www.eetimes.com/nazomi-offers-plug-in-java-accelerat... It's all dot-com era stuff and Sun Microsystems also created a Java OS that could run directly on hardware without a host operating system. That's about it