5 ms·

What, no love for SPARC or MIPS? Further, no love for Transmeta? Poor show.

by angersock 13y ago

sliverstorm 13y ago
It's a field of heavy-hitters. The 4004, 8088, and Opteron 240 each ushered in a new age in microprocessors.
- angersock 13y ago
  Do we have anything like that in the works right now? Everything seems to be fairly straightforward evolutions of the x86 or ARM--though maybe the innovation is happening over in FPGAs or business-not-tech venues?
  - sliverstorm 13y ago
    Well, if that sort of thing is indeed in the works, I doubt anyone would tell us- competitive advantage and all that- but it has been ten years since the Opteron 240. Maybe it will be time for the next one soon. It could even be one of many technologies recently on the market. "Influence" is a legacy; you can't see it on launch day. Maybe one day we will look back on hUMA [0] and say it was one of those Things? The PS4 processor in particular, as the first processor with hUMA. Although, it does look to me like innovation is more gradual now just as a matter of fact- the business cycle is much shorter now. The 4004 was released in '71, the 8088 in '79, but today every chip vendor releases a new chip every six months, so changes will naturally be spread across releases and it will be harder to point and say "There, right there, that is where the world changed" [0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_memory_access#hUMA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_memory_access#hUMA
  - MrBuddyCasino 13y ago
    I agree with hUMA, but don't forget that the game is now mostly about power efficiency. Also, GPUs.
  - Symmetry 13y ago
    Probably this if anything: http://ootbcomp.com/ http://ootbcomp.com/ EDIT: They're releasing explanations as they submit patents, so not everything is public yet. I just submitted the most recent talk. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7027115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7027115
  - bunderbunder 13y ago
    I imagine in another few years the Intel Core Duo will make the list, because of its status as the first major multicore CPU on the consumer market. Realize that's still x86. I'm not sure we'll see that change, though. Another hugely influential Intel chip is behind that story: Itanium marks the point at which it became clear that the market's no longer receptive to completely new ISAs in general-purpose CPUs.
    - Someone 13y ago
      I think the market would have embraced Itanium, if it had been significantly faster. Also, markets change. Today, 'normal' people don't care about CPU architectures. Who cares what his phone runs on, as long as it runs with low power use?
- bowyakka 13y ago
  I would add the P6 architecture to that list, I feel that it was the redemption of many of the ideas in the i960 as well as its designer. It was the one that finally lifted intel in peoples viewpoint. I think that a lot of people fail to realise just how much of intel's product lineup in the last 14 years can be traced to the P6 microarchitecture.
justincormack 13y ago
I dont think Transmeta ended up being that influential. Sparc/Mips as the birth of RISC should be there.
- angersock 13y ago
  I was under the impression that they were munched by Intel and basically became the foundation for the microcode that those chips use now. Am I wrong?
  - masklinn 13y ago
    > I was under the impression that they were munched by Intel Nope, you must be thinking about something else. Transmeta started moving into IP in 2005, sued intel for patent infringement in 2006 (settled for a cool 250mil, Intel got a perpetual, non-exclusive license out of it), licensed tech to Nvidia in 2008 and died in 2009 (was acquired by Novafora in January, Novafora collapsed in July but not before Intellectual Vultures made off with the patent stash in Feb) Now part of Intel's activity at the time (the PIII and Pentium M side which ended up with Core) may well have been inspired by Transmeta (as many allege), but at the same time Transmeta's activity best matches Intel's pursuit of the NetBurst (P4) shit-cake, which ran opposite to pretty much anything Transmeta looked for (unless Transmeta had patents on lofty promises they couldn't come close to deliver on, then year the P4 fits).
    - angersock 13y ago
      Ah, fantastic. Thanks for the info! Fun fact: TX/RX Labs (Houston Hackerspace) has a rack of old Transmeta blade servers that a former member donated.
    - Symmetry 13y ago
      There's speculation that NVidia's Project Denver is an Efficeon reworked to target ARM code rather than x86. So there might be a live Transmeta descendant out in the real world again in a few months. http://anandtech.com/show/7622/nvidia-tegra-k1/2 http://anandtech.com/show/7622/nvidia-tegra-k1/2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Denver http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Denver
oso2k 13y ago
I would certainly agree that MIPS, at least as reference architecture, is an very important part of all modern architectures. The Patterson/Hennesey book [1] is absolutely require reading for many Computer Science/Electrical Engineering/Computer Engineering departments (even my state school required it) in undergrad, and most certainly required in graduate school when Computer Architecture turns to pipelining, cache structures and hierarchies, micro-architecture vs. macro-architecture, instruction set design, etc. Without MIPS, there isn't a baseline architecture to talk about in these courses as all other commercial architectures quickly begin to show their biases and optimization strategies. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Architecture-Quantitative-Approach-3rd-ebook/dp/B004A16R3O/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1389217690&sr=8-3&keywords=computer+architecture+a+quantitative+approach http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Architecture-Quantitative-App...
yread 13y ago
I guess you can never make a list that satisfies everybody. I would like to see something with DEC Alpha there (not only) for the integrated memory controller. Or Nehalem.

What, no love for SPARC or MIPS? Further, no love for Transmeta? Poor show.

sliverstorm 13y ago

It's a field of heavy-hitters. The 4004, 8088, and Opteron 240 each ushered in a new age in microprocessors.

angersock 13y ago
Do we have anything like that in the works right now? Everything seems to be fairly straightforward evolutions of the x86 or ARM--though maybe the innovation is happening over in FPGAs or business-not-tech venues?
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  Well, if that sort of thing is indeed in the works, I doubt anyone would tell us- competitive advantage and all that- but it has been ten years since the Opteron 240. Maybe it will be time for the next one soon. It could even be one of many technologies recently on the market. "Influence" is a legacy; you can't see it on launch day. Maybe one day we will look back on hUMA [0] and say it was one of those Things? The PS4 processor in particular, as the first processor with hUMA. Although, it does look to me like innovation is more gradual now just as a matter of fact- the business cycle is much shorter now. The 4004 was released in '71, the 8088 in '79, but today every chip vendor releases a new chip every six months, so changes will naturally be spread across releases and it will be harder to point and say "There, right there, that is where the world changed" [0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_memory_access#hUMA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_memory_access#hUMA
- MrBuddyCasino 13y ago
  I agree with hUMA, but don't forget that the game is now mostly about power efficiency. Also, GPUs.
- Symmetry 13y ago
  Probably this if anything: http://ootbcomp.com/ http://ootbcomp.com/ EDIT: They're releasing explanations as they submit patents, so not everything is public yet. I just submitted the most recent talk. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7027115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7027115
- bunderbunder 13y ago
  I imagine in another few years the Intel Core Duo will make the list, because of its status as the first major multicore CPU on the consumer market. Realize that's still x86. I'm not sure we'll see that change, though. Another hugely influential Intel chip is behind that story: Itanium marks the point at which it became clear that the market's no longer receptive to completely new ISAs in general-purpose CPUs.
  - Someone 13y ago
    I think the market would have embraced Itanium, if it had been significantly faster. Also, markets change. Today, 'normal' people don't care about CPU architectures. Who cares what his phone runs on, as long as it runs with low power use?
bowyakka 13y ago
I would add the P6 architecture to that list, I feel that it was the redemption of many of the ideas in the i960 as well as its designer. It was the one that finally lifted intel in peoples viewpoint. I think that a lot of people fail to realise just how much of intel's product lineup in the last 14 years can be traced to the P6 microarchitecture.

justincormack 13y ago

I dont think Transmeta ended up being that influential. Sparc/Mips as the birth of RISC should be there.

angersock 13y ago
I was under the impression that they were munched by Intel and basically became the foundation for the microcode that those chips use now. Am I wrong?
- masklinn 13y ago
  > I was under the impression that they were munched by Intel Nope, you must be thinking about something else. Transmeta started moving into IP in 2005, sued intel for patent infringement in 2006 (settled for a cool 250mil, Intel got a perpetual, non-exclusive license out of it), licensed tech to Nvidia in 2008 and died in 2009 (was acquired by Novafora in January, Novafora collapsed in July but not before Intellectual Vultures made off with the patent stash in Feb) Now part of Intel's activity at the time (the PIII and Pentium M side which ended up with Core) may well have been inspired by Transmeta (as many allege), but at the same time Transmeta's activity best matches Intel's pursuit of the NetBurst (P4) shit-cake, which ran opposite to pretty much anything Transmeta looked for (unless Transmeta had patents on lofty promises they couldn't come close to deliver on, then year the P4 fits).
  - angersock 13y ago
    Ah, fantastic. Thanks for the info! Fun fact: TX/RX Labs (Houston Hackerspace) has a rack of old Transmeta blade servers that a former member donated.
  - Symmetry 13y ago
    There's speculation that NVidia's Project Denver is an Efficeon reworked to target ARM code rather than x86. So there might be a live Transmeta descendant out in the real world again in a few months. http://anandtech.com/show/7622/nvidia-tegra-k1/2 http://anandtech.com/show/7622/nvidia-tegra-k1/2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Denver http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Denver

oso2k 13y ago

I would certainly agree that MIPS, at least as reference architecture, is an very important part of all modern architectures. The Patterson/Hennesey book [1] is absolutely require reading for many Computer Science/Electrical Engineering/Computer Engineering departments (even my state school required it) in undergrad, and most certainly required in graduate school when Computer Architecture turns to pipelining, cache structures and hierarchies, micro-architecture vs. macro-architecture, instruction set design, etc. Without MIPS, there isn't a baseline architecture to talk about in these courses as all other commercial architectures quickly begin to show their biases and optimization strategies. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Architecture-Quantitative-Approach-3rd-ebook/dp/B004A16R3O/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1389217690&sr=8-3&keywords=computer+architecture+a+quantitative+approach http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Architecture-Quantitative-App...

yread 13y ago

I guess you can never make a list that satisfies everybody. I would like to see something with DEC Alpha there (not only) for the integrated memory controller. Or Nehalem.