Microsoft Bets Its Future on a Reprogrammable Computer Chip • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft Bets Its Future on a Reprogrammable Computer Chip

#11

Post by Scaevolus » Mon, Sep 26, 2016, 2:00 AM UTC

spydum wrote: post #2

Curious to hear what exactly the devices do? Article hints at compression and such, and the fact that they've moved devices to the edge of the machine to handle network connectivity makes me think it's a shift for better interaction with SDN more than anything else. I don't get how it has much to do with AI though?

In Bing, it's used to score results for queries: "One of these FPGA nodes did the Bing search scoring for a 48-node server pod, and was linked to the nodes by four 10 Gb/sec Ethernet ports." http://www.enterprisetech.com/2014/09/03/microsoft-using-fpg...

Here's a paper about it: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/...

4.4, Feature Extraction: "The first stage of the scoring acceleration pipeline, Feature Extraction (FE), calculates numeric scores for a variety of “features” based on the query and document combination. There are potentially thousands of unique features calculated for each document, as each feature calculation produces a result for every stream in the request—furthermore, some features produce a result per query term as well. Our FPGA accelerator offers a significant advantage over software because each of the feature extraction engines can run in parallel, working on the same input stream. This is effectively a form of Multiple Instruction Single Data (MISD) computation."

Re: Microsoft Bets Its Future on a Reprogrammable Computer Chip

#12

Post by mastax » Mon, Sep 26, 2016, 2:02 AM UTC

RandomOpinion wrote: post #8

xt00 wrote: post #5

It's a little odd saying that Microsoft is betting its future on reprogramable chips.. From reading the article they are just simply now using FPGAs where previously they (along with many other companies) were not. It would be like saying Amazon is betting its future on UPS trucks.. What you put in the FPGA matters.. The reprogramability is really just to allow them to implement algorithms that they use heavily that…

> Intel now owns Alterra so this internal thrust at MSFT may be why they bought them. Intel openly acknowledges it. From the article: " Microsoft’s services are so large, and they use so many FPGAs, that they’re shifting the worldwide chip market. The FPGAs come from a company called Altera, and Intel vice president Diane Bryant tells me that Microsoft is why Intel acquired Altera last summer—a deal worth $16.7 billi…

>Altera strikes me as an odd choice though. I'd have thought Intel would buy out Xilinx, the industry leader, instead.

Intel had been fabbing (some of?) Altera's chips for a few years before the acquisition, so from this angle it makes more sense than Xilinx. As to why Altera had this partnership and not Xilinx, who knows. Perhaps being in second place motivates you to shake things up.

Re: Microsoft Bets Its Future on a Reprogrammable Computer Chip

#13

Post by j1vms » Mon, Sep 26, 2016, 2:58 AM UTC

Neeek wrote: post #3

spydum wrote: post #2

Curious to hear what exactly the devices do? Article hints at compression and such, and the fact that they've moved devices to the edge of the machine to handle network connectivity makes me think it's a shift for better interaction with SDN more than anything else. I don't get how it has much to do with AI though?

Anything they want. I think it's like having a blank breadboard circuit, Microsoft can mock up a new purpose designed chip and program it in to these FPGAs instead of having to fab one up from scratch. It's hard to tell from the article though, I'm just guessing.

There are resource limitations to contend with, roughly like an limit on total number of logic gates (e.g. AND, NOR,..) that can be "rewired", and also the bus speed to memory can become prohibitive for some applications. This is why GPUs have been so successful at the subset of problems they are targeted at, just like GPUs as compared to CPUs. However, FPGAs are becoming ever more malleable and heterogeneous: the embedded toolkit (like on-chip hardwired DSPs) is expanding, and the potential for live reconfiguration of parts of an FPGA while other parts are in-use (dynamic/active partial reconfiguration) [0] is pretty exciting.

Edit: Though I think it was not mentioned in the article, Microsoft and Intel/Altera have indeed gone this route in no small part due to the empirical death of Moore's Law (which has gone much discussed on HN over the past few years).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconfigurable_computing#Parti...

Re: Microsoft Bets Its Future on a Reprogrammable Computer Chip

#14

Post by WheelsAtLarge » Mon, Sep 26, 2016, 4:01 AM UTC

xt00 wrote: post #5

It's a little odd saying that Microsoft is betting its future on reprogramable chips.. From reading the article they are just simply now using FPGAs where previously they (along with many other companies) were not. It would be like saying Amazon is betting its future on UPS trucks.. What you put in the FPGA matters.. The reprogramability is really just to allow them to implement algorithms that they use heavily that…

I think they have no choice. Current cpus have hit a wall when it comes to speed so they have to find other ways to speed up the software.

Yes, FPGAs are a pain to program now but so were general purpose CPU's in the early days. Given time and innovation that will change. We are headed towards a time where most algorithms will be run off specialized chips rather than a general purpose CPUs. It's only a matter of time.

Re: Microsoft Bets Its Future on a Reprogrammable Computer Chip

#15

Post by ttul » Mon, Sep 26, 2016, 4:24 AM UTC

nickpsecurity wrote: post #10

I'm surprised some cloud vendor hasn't acquired eASIC yet. They throw together stuff easily whose price/performance is between FPGA's and standard ASIC's. Have a bunch of machines for rapid, chip prototyping from FPGA's to their S-ASIC's at 90nm, 45nm, and 28nm. Any IP for networking, storage, security, whatever could be turned into a chip easily. Vendor could pull a IBM or SGI with little boards with high-end CPU's…

eASIC is a great little niche-filler. You can get a design fabbed in test quantities for as little as $150K or so, which is akin to "free" next to real ASIC design fabrication.

Re: Microsoft Bets Its Future on a Reprogrammable Computer Chip

#16

Post by ttul » Mon, Sep 26, 2016, 4:25 AM UTC

ttul wrote: post #15

nickpsecurity wrote: post #10

I'm surprised some cloud vendor hasn't acquired eASIC yet. They throw together stuff easily whose price/performance is between FPGA's and standard ASIC's. Have a bunch of machines for rapid, chip prototyping from FPGA's to their S-ASIC's at 90nm, 45nm, and 28nm. Any IP for networking, storage, security, whatever could be turned into a chip easily. Vendor could pull a IBM or SGI with little boards with high-end CPU's…

eASIC is a great little niche-filler. You can get a design fabbed in test quantities for as little as $150K or so, which is akin to "free" next to real ASIC design fabrication.

Note that Altera also offers a similar service but it costs more.

Re: Microsoft Bets Its Future on a Reprogrammable Computer Chip

#17

Post by Const-me » Mon, Sep 26, 2016, 4:39 AM UTC

aab0 wrote: post #6

gradys wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FTA > ... in the coming weeks, they will drive new search algorithms based on deep neural networks—artificial intelligence modeled on the structure of the human brain—executing this AI several orders of magnitude faster than ordinary chips could.

That raises as many questions as it answers. Why FPGAs and not GPUs which can run just about any deep neural network but usually faster and more efficiently?

One reason is FPGAs are more flexible.

Sure, GPUs deliver impressive raw performance. To be useful, the task must benefit from massively parallel hardware. GPU hardware works fantastic for shading polygons, training neural networks, or raytracing. For compression and encryption algorithms however, GPUs aren’t terribly good.

Another reason is while a GPU delivers impressive bandwidth on parallel-friendly workloads, it’s usually possible to achieve lower latencies with FPGA. An FPGA doesn’t decode any instructions, and its computing modules exchange data directly.

Re: Microsoft Bets Its Future on a Reprogrammable Computer Chip

#18

Post by qq66 » Mon, Sep 26, 2016, 4:43 AM UTC

nickpsecurity wrote: post #9

RandomOpinion wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Intel now owns Alterra so this internal thrust at MSFT may be why they bought them. Intel openly acknowledges it. From the article: " Microsoft’s services are so large, and they use so many FPGAs, that they’re shifting the worldwide chip market. The FPGAs come from a company called Altera, and Intel vice president Diane Bryant tells me that Microsoft is why Intel acquired Altera last summer—a deal worth $16.7 billi…

They're similar in capabilities, Altera's tooling is easier-to-use per comments I see , and it's much cheaper buy. Funny thing was that, when Intel was buying Altera, people were suggesting Xilinx should buy AMD. That's how funny the financial situation is between top CPU and FPGA vendors. Haha.

In heavily scale-dependent industries there's often an enormous financial gap between #1 and #2. Compare Intel's CPU profits to AMD's, Nvidia's to formerly ATI, Xilinx to Altera, Apple to Samsung, etc.

Re: Microsoft Bets Its Future on a Reprogrammable Computer Chip

#19

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Sep 26, 2016, 4:43 AM UTC

nickpsecurity wrote: post #9

RandomOpinion wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Intel now owns Alterra so this internal thrust at MSFT may be why they bought them. Intel openly acknowledges it. From the article: " Microsoft’s services are so large, and they use so many FPGAs, that they’re shifting the worldwide chip market. The FPGAs come from a company called Altera, and Intel vice president Diane Bryant tells me that Microsoft is why Intel acquired Altera last summer—a deal worth $16.7 billi…

They're similar in capabilities, Altera's tooling is easier-to-use per comments I see , and it's much cheaper buy. Funny thing was that, when Intel was buying Altera, people were suggesting Xilinx should buy AMD. That's how funny the financial situation is between top CPU and FPGA vendors. Haha.

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft Bets Its Future on a Reprogrammable Computer Chip

#20

Post by nickpsecurity » Mon, Sep 26, 2016, 5:28 AM UTC

qq66 wrote: post #18

nickpsecurity wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're similar in capabilities, Altera's tooling is easier-to-use per comments I see , and it's much cheaper buy. Funny thing was that, when Intel was buying Altera, people were suggesting Xilinx should buy AMD. That's how funny the financial situation is between top CPU and FPGA vendors. Haha.

In heavily scale-dependent industries there's often an enormous financial gap between #1 and #2. Compare Intel's CPU profits to AMD's, Nvidia's to formerly ATI, Xilinx to Altera, Apple to Samsung, etc.

It's true. Comes from First Mover Advantage that I'm aware of. I used to say go for quality first but these days I'm likely to tell people to be first to ship with extra care on upgradeable interfaces. Then you get First Mover Advantage plus ability to fix the BS it causes.