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Intel Discontinues the Intel Developer Forum; IDF17 Cancelled

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Re: Intel Discontinues the Intel Developer Forum; IDF17 Cancelled

#81

Post by wyldfire »

jacquesm wrote: post #71
CalChris wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

custom asic processor Is that like La Brea Tarpit ? Just say ASIC. An ASIC is an Application Specific Integrated Circuit . In particular, a GPU is not an ASIC. Saying Custom Application Specific Integrated Circuit Processor is doubly redundant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application-specific_integrate... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_processing_unit

A GPU actually also is an ASIC, it just happens to be that that application is a different one.

I wouldn't describe something capable of executing something quite so flexible as shaders/kernels an ASIC. It sounds much closer to a CPU -- designed to execute nearly arbitrary software. And if we're including chips that execute software as ASICs, then it seems to really water down the term to be meaningless.

Re: Intel Discontinues the Intel Developer Forum; IDF17 Cancelled

#82

Post by rocqua »

Symmetry wrote: post #65
wtallis wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> " But I always assumed whiz-bang mathematicians had already figured out, I dunno, the threshold at which a processor can be nanosized, or like how big a processor could become before the distances became too great that due to the speed of light further computational advancement wasn't possible. " We're nowhere near the absolute limits imposed by the fundamentals of thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, etc. Those are…

I was doing some back of the envelope math for a blog post last night[1] and it looks like we're not that far away from the limits of what's possible - at least for non-reversible computing. Getting rid of a bit of information as in a Nand get is always going to cost at least 2.75 zeptoJoules and current transistor technology can do it for an attoJoule, so just another factor of 360 to go. Of course then we can try t…

If I recall correctly, the lower bound on energy for destroying a bit depends (linearly?) on the temperature. Couldn't performance then be improved by cooling?

Re: Intel Discontinues the Intel Developer Forum; IDF17 Cancelled

#83

Post by ganfortran »

eklitzke wrote: post #28
matt_wulfeck wrote: post #11

From what I gather online, intel is entering into an exestential crisis as homegrown chips and GPUs are replacing CPUs in the battle for tomorrow's data center. All of the interesting research from Google and others all have one thing in common: a custom asic processor.

The ASIC processors Google use are for inference , not training. Having efficient inference is great, but training is what uses up most of the compute power. The battle between GPUs and CPUs in the datacenter is real, but I wouldn't count out regular CPUs yet. Even with GPU-ready frameworks like Tensorflow, Theano, and Pytorch, it still requires a fair amount of domain expertise to get good performance out of GPUs. T…

> for inference

True, but for training, in near future, it is still going to be GPU, probably Nvidia GPU only, not too much Intel could do.

> requires a fair amount of domain expertise to get good performance out of GPUs

Rightfully so, but invisible to end user/programmer, if you ever use those frameworks and understand their abstraction level. This falls into the realm of few experienced engineers in Google/FAIR/Nvidia and other respected institutions, who understand their business well.

I think Intel is indeed having an existential crisis: they are losing the future, the future of computation is shifting, away from their comfort zone, and they yet figured out how to stop or catch up with the new trend. If CPU becomes a stock controller component, just like a WiFi-chip, how is Intel going to justify its hefty marketing valuation? It is about time for Intel to do some hard soul searching.

Re: Intel Discontinues the Intel Developer Forum; IDF17 Cancelled

#84

Post by rocqua »

rgbrenner wrote: post #39
m-p-3 wrote: post #2

I'm wondering why Intel is withdrawing so much of their money from different projects like this and OpenStack. Maybe AMD is putting a lot of financial pressure on them, and they have to put more funds in R&D?

I question how much pressure intel really feels from AMD. Intel: 60b in revenue, of which over 50b is from processors. AMD: 4b revenue. It's impossible tell what part of that is ATI and processors... since AMD mixes desktop cpus with ATI revenue; and mixes server cpus with embedded and soc revenue. So they're playing a bit of a game to hide their cpu sales. If we assume 1/2 is from cpus, that's 2B. Does Intel really…

Well, anyone that's going to build their own PC in the near future is going to put Ryzen in there. The only hold Intel has over the desktop market comes from pre-build systems. Those are probably the majority, but if some of them start budging, that market might flip faster than you think.

Re: Intel Discontinues the Intel Developer Forum; IDF17 Cancelled

#85

Post by ganfortran »

pkaye wrote: post #7

I'm guessing these yearly conferences will fade away as Moore's Law falls apart and Intel and others will have a harder time coming up with something new to showcase every year. No longer can you rely on process shrinks to innovate.

Moore's law has long lost its initial indicative power, that implies the actual computing performance goes linearly with the number transistors we have on the chip, and became merely a marketing strategy. Now it is time that marketing value is also fading.

Re: Intel Discontinues the Intel Developer Forum; IDF17 Cancelled

#86

Post by RandomOpinion »

komali2 wrote: post #30
pkaye wrote: post #7

I'm guessing these yearly conferences will fade away as Moore's Law falls apart and Intel and others will have a harder time coming up with something new to showcase every year. No longer can you rely on process shrinks to innovate.

People always talk about Moore's Law falling apart, and it seems like people didn't see it coming. I mean, I didn't, I'm just a guy that reads a lot of scifi. But I always assumed whiz-bang mathematicians had already figured out, I dunno, the threshold at which a processor can be nanosized, or like how big a processor could become before the distances became too great that due to the speed of light further computatio…

> "People always talk about Moore's Law falling apart, and it seems like people didn't see it coming."

EEs in the semiconductor industry have been talking about it for the past 20 years; they didn't know exactly when it would occur but they knew it was coming. It's only software developers who were blissfully unaware.

EDIT: The interesting thing about the end of Moore's Law from AMD's (and everybody who isn't Intel) perspective is that finally the playing field is moving closer to even. Before, Intel always had the most advanced fab processes because of the vast amounts of money they funneled into it, which meant that everybody else had to have a better architecture than Intel chips just to get equal performance. Now that Intel is losing that process advantage, it should become possible for everyone to compete purely on the basis of architecture again.

Re: Intel Discontinues the Intel Developer Forum; IDF17 Cancelled

#87

Post by bsder »

komali2 wrote: post #30
pkaye wrote: post #7

I'm guessing these yearly conferences will fade away as Moore's Law falls apart and Intel and others will have a harder time coming up with something new to showcase every year. No longer can you rely on process shrinks to innovate.

People always talk about Moore's Law falling apart, and it seems like people didn't see it coming. I mean, I didn't, I'm just a guy that reads a lot of scifi. But I always assumed whiz-bang mathematicians had already figured out, I dunno, the threshold at which a processor can be nanosized, or like how big a processor could become before the distances became too great that due to the speed of light further computatio…

> People always talk about Moore's Law falling apart, and it seems like people didn't see it coming.

People didn't WANT to see it coming. The data that it broke were back at 65nm but very much at 40nm and 28nm. RAM hasn't scaled in years.

However, the history of technology is littered with the corpses of those who bet against Moore's Law. Combine this with the fact that your job basically depends upon Moore's Law continuing, and you have something similar to the Wall Street collapse. I can bet against it, but I lose my job if I'm wrong, and I lose my job if I'm right. Better to just close my eyes and cash my paycheck.

For consumer evidence simply look at embedded microcontrollers. Note that RAM and flash haven't been scaling every 18 months for a while.

Re: Intel Discontinues the Intel Developer Forum; IDF17 Cancelled

#88

Post by Symmetry »

rocqua wrote: post #82
Symmetry wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was doing some back of the envelope math for a blog post last night[1] and it looks like we're not that far away from the limits of what's possible - at least for non-reversible computing. Getting rid of a bit of information as in a Nand get is always going to cost at least 2.75 zeptoJoules and current transistor technology can do it for an attoJoule, so just another factor of 360 to go. Of course then we can try t…

If I recall correctly, the lower bound on energy for destroying a bit depends (linearly?) on the temperature. Couldn't performance then be improved by cooling?

Yes, you're correct and I probably should have mentioned that.

Re: Intel Discontinues the Intel Developer Forum; IDF17 Cancelled

#89

Post by rgbrenner »

rocqua wrote: post #84
rgbrenner wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I question how much pressure intel really feels from AMD. Intel: 60b in revenue, of which over 50b is from processors. AMD: 4b revenue. It's impossible tell what part of that is ATI and processors... since AMD mixes desktop cpus with ATI revenue; and mixes server cpus with embedded and soc revenue. So they're playing a bit of a game to hide their cpu sales. If we assume 1/2 is from cpus, that's 2B. Does Intel really…

Well, anyone that's going to build their own PC in the near future is going to put Ryzen in there. The only hold Intel has over the desktop market comes from pre-build systems. Those are probably the majority, but if some of them start budging, that market might flip faster than you think.

That remains to be seen.

I just built a new PC and put an i7 in it. The Ryzen 1800x is more expensive than an i7-7700k, while having worse performance.

Obviously AMD makes cheaper versions where that comparison doesn't hold.. but the advantage for AMD here isn't clear cut, and so there's no reason to believe there will be a mass migration to AMD.

Besides I've heard this kind of rhetoric about AMDs cpus before.. and yet I've never seen the sort of switch like you're describing. If it were true that everyone was switching to Ryzen CPUs, they would be sold out everywhere and AMD would be talking about how to scale up by an order of magnitude to meet demand.. none of that has happened.

AMD did a good job with Ryzen, and they'll probably post some great numbers next quarter... maybe they'll get to 5 or 6b over the next year... but Ryzen hasnt changed the selling proposition for AMD. It is still: in the low to mid end desktop processor market, AMD is cheaper and has similar performance.

Re: Intel Discontinues the Intel Developer Forum; IDF17 Cancelled

#90

Post by ghaff »

bhouston wrote: post #67
rbanffy wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not before mainstream software supports it. We had 64-bit with Alpha, MIPS, SPARC, but 64-bit x86 only happened when it could run 32-bit x86 code flawlessly and it only got mass adoption when Windows went 64-bit.

We only got Intel 64 bit CPUs once AMD got them first and people starting to buy them.

We only got x86 Intel 64-bit CPUs when AMD did AMD64. Intel was trying to get everyone to go down the Itanium route but AMD forced them to do their own x86 64-bit extensions.
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