4 ms·

> Intel soon discovered the obvious, which is that customers with applications well-suited to FPGAs already use FPGAs. Yes, but pairing an FPGA somewhat tightl

> Intel soon discovered the obvious, which is that customers with applications well-suited to FPGAs already use FPGAs. Yes, but pairing an FPGA somewhat tightly integrated with an actually powerful x86 CPU would have made an interesting alternative to the usual FPGA+some low end ARM combo that's common these days.

bigfatkitten 2y ago
Applications that benefit from the Zynq-style combination (e.g. radio systems) generally take that approach because they have SWaP concerns that preclude the use of big x86 CPUs in the first place.
- snihalani 2y ago
  What's a SWaP concern?
  - superkuh 2y ago
    Size Weight and Power.
    - snihalani 2y ago
      I'd nominate another P for Profit.
      - superkuh 2y ago
        In industry this is formalized as SWaP-C, where the C stands for cost.
  - 201984 2y ago
    Size, Weight, and Power. It would be very nice if people would take the two seconds to type those words out instead of using ungoogleable acronyms on a public forum unfamilar with the terms.
michaelt 2y ago
Sure, if they wanted to intel could have done what nvidia did with CUDA: Put the tech into everything, even their lowest end consumer devices, and sink hundreds of millions into tooling and developer education given away free of charge. And maybe it would have lead somewhere. Perhaps. But they didn't.
- danielmarkbruce 2y ago
  It was the thought at the time that they'd do this. It's amazing that they don't seem to have actually tried ? Any sense as to why or what went wrong?
  - michaelt 2y ago
    I wasn't there, but I've always imagined the conversation went something like this: Intel: Welcome, Altera. We'd like you to integrate your FPGA fabric onto our CPUs. Altera: Sure thing, boss! Loads of our FPGAs get plugged into PCIe slots, or have hard or soft CPU cores, so we know what we're doing. Intel: Great! Oh, by the way, we'll need the ability to run multiple FPGA 'programs' independently, at the same time. Altera: Ummmm Intel: The programs might belong to different users, they'll need an impenetrable security barrier between them. It needs full OS integration, so multi-user systems can let different users FPGA at the same time. Windows and Linux, naturally. And virtual machine support too, otherwise how will cloud vendors be able to use it? Altera: Uh Intel: We'll need run-time scaling, so large chips get fully utilised, but smaller chips still work. And it'll need to be dynamic, so a user can go from using the whole chip for one program to sharing it between two. Intel: And of course indefinite backwards compatibility, that's the x86 promise. Don't do anything you can't support for at least 20 years. Intel: Your toolchain must support protecting licensed IP blocks, but also be 100% acceptable to the open source community. Intel: Also your current toolchain kinda sucks. It needs to be much easier to use. And stop charging for it. Intel: You'll need a college outreach program. And a Coursera course. Of course students might not have our hardware, so we'll need a cloud offering of some sort, so they can actually do the exercises in the course. Altera: I guess to start with we Intel: Are you profitable yet? Why aren't you contributing to our bottom line?
  - 2y ago

bigfatkitten 2y ago

Applications that benefit from the Zynq-style combination (e.g. radio systems) generally take that approach because they have SWaP concerns that preclude the use of big x86 CPUs in the first place.

snihalani 2y ago
What's a SWaP concern?
- superkuh 2y ago
  Size Weight and Power.
  - snihalani 2y ago
    I'd nominate another P for Profit.
    - superkuh 2y ago
      In industry this is formalized as SWaP-C, where the C stands for cost.
- 201984 2y ago
  Size, Weight, and Power. It would be very nice if people would take the two seconds to type those words out instead of using ungoogleable acronyms on a public forum unfamilar with the terms.

michaelt 2y ago

Sure, if they wanted to intel could have done what nvidia did with CUDA: Put the tech into everything, even their lowest end consumer devices, and sink hundreds of millions into tooling and developer education given away free of charge. And maybe it would have lead somewhere. Perhaps. But they didn't.

danielmarkbruce 2y ago
It was the thought at the time that they'd do this. It's amazing that they don't seem to have actually tried ? Any sense as to why or what went wrong?
- michaelt 2y ago
  I wasn't there, but I've always imagined the conversation went something like this: Intel: Welcome, Altera. We'd like you to integrate your FPGA fabric onto our CPUs. Altera: Sure thing, boss! Loads of our FPGAs get plugged into PCIe slots, or have hard or soft CPU cores, so we know what we're doing. Intel: Great! Oh, by the way, we'll need the ability to run multiple FPGA 'programs' independently, at the same time. Altera: Ummmm Intel: The programs might belong to different users, they'll need an impenetrable security barrier between them. It needs full OS integration, so multi-user systems can let different users FPGA at the same time. Windows and Linux, naturally. And virtual machine support too, otherwise how will cloud vendors be able to use it? Altera: Uh Intel: We'll need run-time scaling, so large chips get fully utilised, but smaller chips still work. And it'll need to be dynamic, so a user can go from using the whole chip for one program to sharing it between two. Intel: And of course indefinite backwards compatibility, that's the x86 promise. Don't do anything you can't support for at least 20 years. Intel: Your toolchain must support protecting licensed IP blocks, but also be 100% acceptable to the open source community. Intel: Also your current toolchain kinda sucks. It needs to be much easier to use. And stop charging for it. Intel: You'll need a college outreach program. And a Coursera course. Of course students might not have our hardware, so we'll need a cloud offering of some sort, so they can actually do the exercises in the course. Altera: I guess to start with we Intel: Are you profitable yet? Why aren't you contributing to our bottom line?
- 2y ago