Darpa Funds Development of New Type of Processor • Hacker News Board

Re: Darpa Funds Development of New Type of Processor

#41

Post by davidiach » Fri, Jun 09, 2017, 1:39 PM UTC

bantunes wrote: post #14

Can't wait for this publicly funded research to make some private corporation billions!

You mean that private corporations can somehow just sit there and collect rent from this publicly funded research? Amazing!

Re: Darpa Funds Development of New Type of Processor

#42

Post by angstrom » Fri, Jun 09, 2017, 1:39 PM UTC

jlebrech wrote: post #36

angstrom wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if sarcastic or sincere. You can damn near predict what will be the future tech 10 years down the line based on what DARPA is doing to make killing more efficient.

does killing the RIGHT people count as efficient?

That's just a formality. The implementation is trivial and left to the reader of any good DARPA project as an exercise.

Re: Darpa Funds Development of New Type of Processor

#43

Post by mikepurvis » Fri, Jun 09, 2017, 1:46 PM UTC

radicalbyte wrote: post #27

annnnd wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the old days this technique was used to get information about number of people who found the article interesting enough to read the next page, all without JavaScript. This of course assumes that readers notice the "next page" link, where is where they seem to have failed (or maybe the expectations of readers have changed so much that the new breed of readers no longer notice such links - quite possible).

It was used for ad impressions. Each page read = new ads = more $$ for the publisher.

For better or worse, it also improves analytics for the publisher— they can measure what proportion of readers made it to page 2, and of those, how long they spent on page 1.

(Yes, some of that could be done with scroll tracking too, "clicked to view page 2" is still a very strong signal of engagement.)

Re: Darpa Funds Development of New Type of Processor

#44

Post by meri_dian » Fri, Jun 09, 2017, 1:46 PM UTC

_jal wrote: post #40

dropthebase wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it annoys you that much, stop using internet, throw away your laptop and pretty much everything else in your life. No need to support these "evil private corporations". Yeah, really. I'm sure you can do it. What? Not so good idea anymore? It's funny how ironic and shortsighted these HN commies are.

> It's funny how ironic and shortsighted these HN commies are. The hilarious part is that you don't appear to be complaining about the government funding of research part.

Government funded research played a role in the development of the Internet. Private enterprise also played a huge role.

So we're reaching the conclusion that a capitalist economy combined with a functional government allocating resources to projects that hold the promise of long term potential but not short term financial gains is a good system? That both capitalism and government activity play important roles that each is better at filling than the other?

And we're also realizing that a debate which reduces to 'capitalist vs communist' is idiotic? Wow. I'm proud of us.

Re: Darpa Funds Development of New Type of Processor

#45

Post by benibela » Fri, Jun 09, 2017, 1:56 PM UTC

AriaMinaei wrote: post #17

grondilu wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's mentioned on page 2 of the article (you may have missed it was two-paged)

Thanks! I did miss that page. But even though they mention "... calls for the development of software tools to help programming the new architecture...", I'm still unsure as to how programming for such a processor might look like.

Perhaps it will make trees faster than hashmaps? Linked lists better than arrays?

Re: Darpa Funds Development of New Type of Processor

#46

Post by cvoss » Fri, Jun 09, 2017, 1:57 PM UTC

youdontknowtho wrote: post #31

The way that they describe sparse graph processing in memory sounds like the kind of pointer chasing that makes run-time object-oriented programming memory access patterns slow. I wonder if that was a translation to PR artifact, or if there might be something there to accelerate some of the Java or .Net memory access patterns that we all use.

There is a very direct sense in which pointer chasing _is_ the fundamental operation of sparse graph processing.

On top of what access patterns the developers tend to use, there's always the JVM garbage collector (the bane of efficiency) which runs a basic graph algorithm over the entire program's network of pointers. Although, I suspect in many applications the graph in question is small (by comparison to big-data-scale graphs) and throwing heavy machinery like this at it would be overkill.

Then again, maybe I'm not dreaming big enough, and this kind of processor will make the need for cache line locality optimizations, careful instruction scheduling around memory I/O, and half-second freezes for GC a thing of the past?

Re: Darpa Funds Development of New Type of Processor

#47

Post by KekDemaga » Fri, Jun 09, 2017, 2:01 PM UTC

angstrom wrote: post #42

jlebrech wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

does killing the RIGHT people count as efficient?

That's just a formality. The implementation is trivial and left to the reader of any good DARPA project as an exercise.

Killing the wrong people isn't DARPA's problem, we have bombs that we can drop out of a plane and down a chimney. Blame the elected officials that ordered the bomb dropped in the first place and the intelligence apparatus that convinced them it was good idea.

Re: Darpa Funds Development of New Type of Processor

#48

Post by exelius » Fri, Jun 09, 2017, 2:05 PM UTC

bantunes wrote: post #14

Can't wait for this publicly funded research to make some private corporation billions!

No way; this is the kind of thing that can become a state-secret level advantage.

Seriously, it's a graph processor. Graph analysis is basically the entire job of a modern intelligence agency.

There's a cold-war level arms race going on in cybersecurity. Russia embarrassed us with their sophisticated cyberwarfare capability in the last election -- they were able to infiltrate both campaigns AND the FBI (they used false information to manipulate Comey into making a statement -- which required them to know how conflicted he was over interference in the Clinton e-mail thing), and undoubtedly were behind the news cycles in the months before the election.

Better/more condensed graph analysis capability, at the scale that the three-letter-agencies use it? That's a strategic advantage. You can bet the Russians are working on something similar. If they haven't already -- throughout the cold war they tended to push the frontier of technology faster than the US, but had trouble mobilizing that advantage because communism was so damn inefficient.