4 ms·

On reading this I thought "oh someone's doing the Green Arrays thing" but this looks like it pre-dates those CPUs by some time. But as nobody has mentioned it

On reading this I thought "oh someone's doing the Green Arrays thing" but this looks like it pre-dates those CPUs by some time. But as nobody has mentioned it yet surprisingly: https://www.greenarraychips.com/ https://www.greenarraychips.com/ albeit perhaps not weird; just different

mikewarot 2y ago
The Green arrays chips are quite interesting in their own right. The ability to have a grid of CPUs each working at part of a problem could be used in parallelizing a lot of things, including the execution of LLMs. There are secondary consequences of breaking computation down to a directed acyclic graph of binary logic operations. You can guarantee runtime, as you know a-priori how long each step will take. Splitting up computation to avoid the complications of Amdahl's law should be fairly easy. I hope to eventually build a small array of Raspberry Pi Pico modules that can emulate a larger array than any one module can handle. Linear scaling is a given.
- LargoLasskhyfv 2y ago
  Nag nag...(meant inspirational in case you're unaware of it)... Regarding Amdahl's law and avoiding its complications this fits: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Apple-CORE+D-RISC+SVP+Microgrids+UTLEON3 https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Apple-CORE+D-RISC+SVP+Microgrids+U... (Not limited to SPARC, conceptually it's applicable almost anywhere else) From the software-/programming-/compiler-side this fits right on top it: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Dybvig+Nanopass https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Dybvig+Nanopass (Also conceptually, doesn't have to be Scheme, but why not? It's nice.)
MaxBarraclough 2y ago
Agreed, they belong on this list. 18-bit Forth computers, available today and intended for real-world use in low-power contexts. Website: https://www.greenarraychips.com/home/documents/index.php#architecture https://www.greenarraychips.com/home/documents/index.php#arc... PDF with technical overview of one of their chips: https://www.greenarraychips.com/home/documents/greg/PB003-110412-F18A.pdf https://www.greenarraychips.com/home/documents/greg/PB003-11... Discussed: * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23142322 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23142322 * https://comp.lang.forth.narkive.com/y7h1mSWz/more-thoughts-on-green-arrays https://comp.lang.forth.narkive.com/y7h1mSWz/more-thoughts-o...

mikewarot 2y ago

The Green arrays chips are quite interesting in their own right. The ability to have a grid of CPUs each working at part of a problem could be used in parallelizing a lot of things, including the execution of LLMs. There are secondary consequences of breaking computation down to a directed acyclic graph of binary logic operations. You can guarantee runtime, as you know a-priori how long each step will take. Splitting up computation to avoid the complications of Amdahl's law should be fairly easy. I hope to eventually build a small array of Raspberry Pi Pico modules that can emulate a larger array than any one module can handle. Linear scaling is a given.

LargoLasskhyfv 2y ago
Nag nag...(meant inspirational in case you're unaware of it)... Regarding Amdahl's law and avoiding its complications this fits: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Apple-CORE+D-RISC+SVP+Microgrids+UTLEON3 https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Apple-CORE+D-RISC+SVP+Microgrids+U... (Not limited to SPARC, conceptually it's applicable almost anywhere else) From the software-/programming-/compiler-side this fits right on top it: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Dybvig+Nanopass https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Dybvig+Nanopass (Also conceptually, doesn't have to be Scheme, but why not? It's nice.)

MaxBarraclough 2y ago

Agreed, they belong on this list. 18-bit Forth computers, available today and intended for real-world use in low-power contexts. Website: https://www.greenarraychips.com/home/documents/index.php#architecture https://www.greenarraychips.com/home/documents/index.php#arc... PDF with technical overview of one of their chips: https://www.greenarraychips.com/home/documents/greg/PB003-110412-F18A.pdf https://www.greenarraychips.com/home/documents/greg/PB003-11... Discussed: * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23142322 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23142322 * https://comp.lang.forth.narkive.com/y7h1mSWz/more-thoughts-on-green-arrays https://comp.lang.forth.narkive.com/y7h1mSWz/more-thoughts-o...