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Anytime an algorithm is important enough to be of interest for hundreds of millions of user it is worth the investment to etch its primitives into silicon. And

Anytime an algorithm is important enough to be of interest for hundreds of millions of user it is worth the investment to etch its primitives into silicon. And if there are new and exciting computations that will only be in hardware next year, CPUs are powerful enough that software can tide us over until the silicon arrives.

anigbrowl 13y ago
Especially when the price of entry to ASIC land is relatively low by industrial standards - http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/7042/how-much-does-it-cost-to-have-a-custom-asic-made http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/7042/how-much... eg for something very simple you can do it for thousands or tens of thousands...but in that price range it's probably still more economical to implement in software or do it discretely with SMT unless you are very sure about the existence of a market.
- hershel 13y ago
  It's not cheap. If you want to compete wit cpu/fpga/gpu ,you'll need to use the latest manufacturing processes and do complex designs,and now we're talking about more than 100 million USD investment.
  - pjc50 13y ago
    Not unless you're trying to compete with Intel. Consider the various bitcoin ASIC miners: beat all other technologies for solving that problem for an investment of a few million. However, algorithms are so rarely the stumbling block for applications; data storage, management and communications are. The major exception is graphics, hence the GPU.
    - hershel 13y ago
      a bitcoin miner isn't a isn't a general processing unit.It does something specific that's very very easy to optimize and implement, and you don't use latest manufacturing process but tools like easic , hence the small investment.
      - anigbrowl 13y ago
        Hence my comment about it being cheap for very simple applications. If you want to compete with market leading vendors then yeah of course it's going to be hideously expensive.
      - kyzyl 13y ago
        I don't think he was suggesting that developing a general process cpu that is competitive with Intel's offering costs only 10k. He said that getting your ASIC design, i.e. application-specific integrated circuit, etched into silicon is cheaper than is used to be and that's true. I know guys who implemented things like novel power converters on an IC as their masters projects, using only the budget of, well, master projects. The money is a huge barrier to entry for hobbyist types, but if we're talking about commercial stuff, it'll probably cost you a lot more to pay for the engineers who are competent enough to implement something that will actually work than it will to do the fabrication.
beltex 13y ago
Pretty much the same answer from a CPU researcher formerly at Intel, in a reddit AMA. "I like FPGAs, but I doubt they will ever become widely deployed. They pay ~20x overhead, so any algorithm that is a good fit for them becomes a new instruction in the next CPU generation. The reprogrammability is only a feature in highly constrained (i.e. niche) environments." http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1yj77b/as_requested_i_was_a_cpu_researcher_ama/cfl0slx http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1yj77b/as_requested_i_...

anigbrowl 13y ago

Especially when the price of entry to ASIC land is relatively low by industrial standards - http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/7042/how-much-does-it-cost-to-have-a-custom-asic-made http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/7042/how-much... eg for something very simple you can do it for thousands or tens of thousands...but in that price range it's probably still more economical to implement in software or do it discretely with SMT unless you are very sure about the existence of a market.

hershel 13y ago
It's not cheap. If you want to compete wit cpu/fpga/gpu ,you'll need to use the latest manufacturing processes and do complex designs,and now we're talking about more than 100 million USD investment.
- pjc50 13y ago
  Not unless you're trying to compete with Intel. Consider the various bitcoin ASIC miners: beat all other technologies for solving that problem for an investment of a few million. However, algorithms are so rarely the stumbling block for applications; data storage, management and communications are. The major exception is graphics, hence the GPU.
  - hershel 13y ago
    a bitcoin miner isn't a isn't a general processing unit.It does something specific that's very very easy to optimize and implement, and you don't use latest manufacturing process but tools like easic , hence the small investment.
    - anigbrowl 13y ago
      Hence my comment about it being cheap for very simple applications. If you want to compete with market leading vendors then yeah of course it's going to be hideously expensive.
    - kyzyl 13y ago
      I don't think he was suggesting that developing a general process cpu that is competitive with Intel's offering costs only 10k. He said that getting your ASIC design, i.e. application-specific integrated circuit, etched into silicon is cheaper than is used to be and that's true. I know guys who implemented things like novel power converters on an IC as their masters projects, using only the budget of, well, master projects. The money is a huge barrier to entry for hobbyist types, but if we're talking about commercial stuff, it'll probably cost you a lot more to pay for the engineers who are competent enough to implement something that will actually work than it will to do the fabrication.

beltex 13y ago

Pretty much the same answer from a CPU researcher formerly at Intel, in a reddit AMA. "I like FPGAs, but I doubt they will ever become widely deployed. They pay ~20x overhead, so any algorithm that is a good fit for them becomes a new instruction in the next CPU generation. The reprogrammability is only a feature in highly constrained (i.e. niche) environments." http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1yj77b/as_requested_i_was_a_cpu_researcher_ama/cfl0slx http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1yj77b/as_requested_i_...