6 ms·

Anyone know how this thing compares to a cheap $~150 video card that supports CUDA/OpenCL?

by oomkiller 13y ago

jevinskie 13y ago
It should get trounced. I think Adapteva is hedging their bets on core counts much higher than 16 or 64.
- hosh 13y ago
  The main advantage is having a small power profile. We should be able to use it for things like running OpenCV on a quadcopter. Example: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/adapteva/parallella-a-supercomputer-for-everyone/posts/547314 http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/adapteva/parallella-a-su...
  - Florin_Andrei 13y ago
    Well, I was just daydreaming yesterday about usage scenarios that may require an FPGA on a drone. :)
dragontamer 13y ago
OpenCL / CUDA is more mature and ready... and a far more understood architecture. I bet that any GPU will crush this thing in pure compute power. Where Parallella's advantage comes in, is its grid architecture. Whereas a typical GPU today is "very very wide" (IE: an AMD 7750 does 512 operations at the same time), the Epiphany is a "grid", and each node of the grid can be doing different things. I'm going to greatly simplify things down for you with this example (so experts out there... don't shoot me :-p). A GPU can execute 1 program, but that one program can do 512 operations at once. On the other hand, the Epiphany-IV truly can run 64-different programs at once.... all taking different paths and doing their own things. Epiphany-III and Epiphany IV perform "if statements" more or less how you'd expect a computer would do it. Which is the important bit... if-statements don't really slow down your program. In contrast, the typical wide "wavefront GPU architecture"... the "if statement" basically halves the speed of your GPU. The GPU has to execute one "half" of the branch, and then later, it comes back to execute the other "half". (Its only "really" executing one program, but doing 512 of them at once. See what I mean?) GPUs are a "wide" architecture... but Epiphany is the first "grid-based" supercomputer for ~$99. GPUs are very mature technologies... Epiphany is still in initial research (as far as the consumer market is concerned) EDIT: In reality, a modern GPU supports maybe 4 to 8 different wavefronts (8 for the more expensive GPUs, maybe only 4 for the cheaper ~$99 GPUs). But each of those wavefronts can do hundreds of computations at once.
- hosh 13y ago
  Yeah, it's too bad that the Green Array technology (http://www.greenarraychips.com/ http://www.greenarraychips.com/) never put out a similar product for $99.
  - dragontamer 13y ago
    Point taken :-) There always are other chips that I'm not aware of...
    - hosh 13y ago
      Granted, you would have had to use this strange dialect of Forth called Color Forth. Getting a kit together that you can hack on requires more than $99. On the other hand, that array runs clockless and can mimic analog signals. I think Parallela is easily the most accessible super computer, suitable for hobbyists. I expect a lot of interesting things to come out of it, the way Arduino opened up a lot of device hacking for people. I had passed on kickstarter on it and it wasn't until I got interested in deep belief networks that I kicked myself for not jumping in.
  - aidenn0 13y ago
    I would hazard a guess that the epiphany cores are more heavyweight than the GA cores. The GA cores are extremely lightweight, to the point where it is expected that even the simplest tasks will involve several of them cooperating. On the other hand the GA chips are optimized for low power and have significantly more tightly integrated IO than the epiphany.
    - hosh 13y ago
      The GA cores are meant to be linked together. According to the docs and videos, you use the special IDE to define blocks or grids of GA cores and have them working in tandem. The GA's biggest weakness is probably the lack of software and libraries. On the other hand, you could essentially create software-configurable DSPs, or program the entire array to act as a single, traditional CPU core.

Anyone know how this thing compares to a cheap $~150 video card that supports CUDA/OpenCL?

jevinskie 13y ago

It should get trounced. I think Adapteva is hedging their bets on core counts much higher than 16 or 64.

hosh 13y ago
The main advantage is having a small power profile. We should be able to use it for things like running OpenCV on a quadcopter. Example: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/adapteva/parallella-a-supercomputer-for-everyone/posts/547314 http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/adapteva/parallella-a-su...
- Florin_Andrei 13y ago
  Well, I was just daydreaming yesterday about usage scenarios that may require an FPGA on a drone. :)

dragontamer 13y ago

OpenCL / CUDA is more mature and ready... and a far more understood architecture. I bet that any GPU will crush this thing in pure compute power. Where Parallella's advantage comes in, is its grid architecture. Whereas a typical GPU today is "very very wide" (IE: an AMD 7750 does 512 operations at the same time), the Epiphany is a "grid", and each node of the grid can be doing different things. I'm going to greatly simplify things down for you with this example (so experts out there... don't shoot me :-p). A GPU can execute 1 program, but that one program can do 512 operations at once. On the other hand, the Epiphany-IV truly can run 64-different programs at once.... all taking different paths and doing their own things. Epiphany-III and Epiphany IV perform "if statements" more or less how you'd expect a computer would do it. Which is the important bit... if-statements don't really slow down your program. In contrast, the typical wide "wavefront GPU architecture"... the "if statement" basically halves the speed of your GPU. The GPU has to execute one "half" of the branch, and then later, it comes back to execute the other "half". (Its only "really" executing one program, but doing 512 of them at once. See what I mean?) GPUs are a "wide" architecture... but Epiphany is the first "grid-based" supercomputer for ~$99. GPUs are very mature technologies... Epiphany is still in initial research (as far as the consumer market is concerned) EDIT: In reality, a modern GPU supports maybe 4 to 8 different wavefronts (8 for the more expensive GPUs, maybe only 4 for the cheaper ~$99 GPUs). But each of those wavefronts can do hundreds of computations at once.

hosh 13y ago
Yeah, it's too bad that the Green Array technology (http://www.greenarraychips.com/ http://www.greenarraychips.com/) never put out a similar product for $99.
- dragontamer 13y ago
  Point taken :-) There always are other chips that I'm not aware of...
  - hosh 13y ago
    Granted, you would have had to use this strange dialect of Forth called Color Forth. Getting a kit together that you can hack on requires more than $99. On the other hand, that array runs clockless and can mimic analog signals. I think Parallela is easily the most accessible super computer, suitable for hobbyists. I expect a lot of interesting things to come out of it, the way Arduino opened up a lot of device hacking for people. I had passed on kickstarter on it and it wasn't until I got interested in deep belief networks that I kicked myself for not jumping in.
- aidenn0 13y ago
  I would hazard a guess that the epiphany cores are more heavyweight than the GA cores. The GA cores are extremely lightweight, to the point where it is expected that even the simplest tasks will involve several of them cooperating. On the other hand the GA chips are optimized for low power and have significantly more tightly integrated IO than the epiphany.
  - hosh 13y ago
    The GA cores are meant to be linked together. According to the docs and videos, you use the special IDE to define blocks or grids of GA cores and have them working in tandem. The GA's biggest weakness is probably the lack of software and libraries. On the other hand, you could essentially create software-configurable DSPs, or program the entire array to act as a single, traditional CPU core.