Intel Gears Up for FPGA Push • Hacker News Board

Re: Intel Gears Up for FPGA Push

#11

Post by spaceseaman » Tue, Oct 03, 2017, 2:45 AM UTC

jackyinger wrote: post #7

If they do release something in this space they oughta make a SKU that can plop into a standard desktop socket on a standard motherboard. Electrical and computer engineering individuals want cheap big FPGAs too! (Speaking for myself of course.) Or just release a cheap pcie card! Cmon guys! Oh wait you've forgotten how important it is to get a developer community started around your hardware cause it's been so long si…

> Oh wait you've forgotten how important it is to get a developer community started around your hardware cause it's been so long since the x86 was new!

Intel: Huh? Developers? But they don't buy servers full of chips. Why do I have to sell to developers?

Re: Intel Gears Up for FPGA Push

#12

Post by microcolonel » Tue, Oct 03, 2017, 2:51 AM UTC

0xbear wrote: post #8

microcolonel wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they could offer a good (maybe open?) toolchain, online partial reprogramming?

The words Intel and “open” do not really belong in the same sentence.

Idunno, Xeon Phi, their GPUs since about 2007 (though a lot better recently), good cooperation and documentation with their NICs, direct participation in both major open compiler toolchains, all the stuff that 01.org lists... I think they're doing pretty well with open (aside from the products themselves, but that's kinda the point of having a company).

Frankly Intel has done an adequate to good job of providing open source software to interact with all of their hardware for as long as I've been computering. They're the one vendor that has never told me to install a proprietary driver.

Re: Intel Gears Up for FPGA Push

#13

Post by burntrelish1273 » Tue, Oct 03, 2017, 2:53 AM UTC

The biggest problem with reconfigurable computing is it's either an afterthought, tools are too narrow/proprietary or an extra add-in card.

Add a million LUTs and several thousand special-purpose blocks (ALUs, CAM, SRAM, DSPs, etc.) on CPU die that can be reconfigured within a few 10k cycles (ie process context), and then future AI-enabled optimizing compilers could incrementally profile and accelerate applications with reconfigurable resources in new, creative and interesting ways. IRAM and similar zillion core approaches are another approach to solve traditional performance locality bottlenecks: distribute processing, interconnect and RAM amongst each other. It makes the most sense to co-evolve such a radical undertaking gradually with compiler vendors and large customers so that support and usability is working from launch, rather than just throwing silicon over the wall and using the "hail mary" method of product (non)design.

PS: Intel could push almost any new on-die CPU technology service/product into the mainstream right now on the server side because of their de-facto monopoly oligopoly dominance. I don't think they will as there is immense organizational pressure to not innovate too much.

Re: Intel Gears Up for FPGA Push

#14

Post by revelation » Tue, Oct 03, 2017, 2:55 AM UTC

katastic wrote: post #10

I've honestly been waiting for this since for YEARS. I've had a vision for "the future of computing". FPGAs that reconfigure themselves ( This would be hard for a single person, but any large company could handle making this. You can even do it with off-the-shelf FPGAs. The biggest problems are 1) bandwidth. The "macro" function size needs to be bigger than the latency hit you take for asking the FPGA over computing…

It just doesn't deliver on performance, or energy consumption. That was always going to be the case (you are adding a layer of abstraction at the silicon level). So for anything that is measured on "operations / second" or "operations / joule", FPGAs will always lose out. By now industry has learned that the key is to tailor algorithms for what we can do fast (vector+branching on CPU, everything branchless on GPU), not shoehorn silicon into algorithms.

So what can FPGA do? Fast, low latency, high bandwidth interaction with peripherals. The irony here is that to have this work out, you kind of want to have your peripheral connected to the FPGA.. which takes away all the fun from the reconfigurable stuff, because you can't reroute your PCB. So now 99% of FPGAs deployed end up running in the same configuration always and companies with the necessary scales pour it into ASICs.

FPGAs solve a niche problem of interacting with very fast, massively parallel data buses and systems (think CCD sensors, ADC sampling, ..) that a linear execution, Turing style processor isn't suitable for. And pretty much only for applications where you don't have the volume to convince a chip manufacturer to put your peripheral into silicon.

Re: Intel Gears Up for FPGA Push

#15

Post by reilly3000 » Tue, Oct 03, 2017, 2:56 AM UTC

katastic wrote: post #10

I've honestly been waiting for this since for YEARS. I've had a vision for "the future of computing". FPGAs that reconfigure themselves ( This would be hard for a single person, but any large company could handle making this. You can even do it with off-the-shelf FPGAs. The biggest problems are 1) bandwidth. The "macro" function size needs to be bigger than the latency hit you take for asking the FPGA over computing…

Wow that is a solid plan. I propose you or whomever builds it calls is Nitro or something to that affect. Speed how you need it. Imagine an open library or FPGA profiles for popular apps. Build one for Photoshop and you have yourself a nice biz.

Re: Intel Gears Up for FPGA Push

#16

Post by StillBored » Tue, Oct 03, 2017, 2:57 AM UTC

spaceseaman wrote: post #11

jackyinger wrote: post #7

If they do release something in this space they oughta make a SKU that can plop into a standard desktop socket on a standard motherboard. Electrical and computer engineering individuals want cheap big FPGAs too! (Speaking for myself of course.) Or just release a cheap pcie card! Cmon guys! Oh wait you've forgotten how important it is to get a developer community started around your hardware cause it's been so long si…

> Oh wait you've forgotten how important it is to get a developer community started around your hardware cause it's been so long since the x86 was new! Intel: Huh? Developers? But they don't buy servers full of chips. Why do I have to sell to developers?

That is pretty much the ARM and POWER problem too, they think they can grow in new markets with these hugely expensive machines in quantities of ten racks.

Both would have significantly more traction if they offered a reasonable desktop class machine, but they don't seem to be able to do it. For some reason there are dozens of RPi type devices but making a $200-$300 device with a reasonable set of expansion ports (sata+USB3+pcie gen3+m.2+10g ethernet+etc) seems all but impossible. POWER has a similar problem, with the only inexpensive devices being old NXP parts (yah NXP is still selling a core that turns 20 years old this year https://www.nxp.com/products/microcontrollers-and-processors... thats great if your still selling car parts from 20 years ago, not so great if your designing a part today.).

Re: Intel Gears Up for FPGA Push

#17

Post by wmf » Tue, Oct 03, 2017, 3:02 AM UTC

StillBored wrote: post #16

spaceseaman wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Oh wait you've forgotten how important it is to get a developer community started around your hardware cause it's been so long since the x86 was new! Intel: Huh? Developers? But they don't buy servers full of chips. Why do I have to sell to developers?

That is pretty much the ARM and POWER problem too, they think they can grow in new markets with these hugely expensive machines in quantities of ten racks. Both would have significantly more traction if they offered a reasonable desktop class machine, but they don't seem to be able to do it. For some reason there are dozens of RPi type devices but making a $200-$300 device with a reasonable set of expansion ports (sa…

Sadly, I suspect all the small developers combined are smaller than one hyperscale customer.

Re: Intel Gears Up for FPGA Push

#18

Post by signa11 » Tue, Oct 03, 2017, 3:02 AM UTC

katastic wrote: post #10

I've honestly been waiting for this since for YEARS. I've had a vision for "the future of computing". FPGAs that reconfigure themselves ( This would be hard for a single person, but any large company could handle making this. You can even do it with off-the-shelf FPGAs. The biggest problems are 1) bandwidth. The "macro" function size needs to be bigger than the latency hit you take for asking the FPGA over computing…

this (or something very close to this) has been described in 1993 (!) paper/article called 'processor reconfiguration through instruction set metamorphosis' or PRISM.

perhaps you might find it interesting. have fun :)

Re: Intel Gears Up for FPGA Push

#19

Post by sitkack » Tue, Oct 03, 2017, 3:06 AM UTC

The whole things smells like monopoly dragging its heels. It bought the competition to slow adoption, claiming that CPU-FPGA hybrids were just around the corner. What we need is a new FPGA based fabric that has the major building blocks to create any number of RISCV cores. Tiles that can be RISCV, or if "sacrificed" turn into clusters of LABs for general purpose use. And the chip company with the software vision for this is AMD with HSAIL.

Re: Intel Gears Up for FPGA Push

#20

Post by zw123456 » Tue, Oct 03, 2017, 3:08 AM UTC

FPGA's are the shit but the software is the key. To make them really fly we need some really brilliant software to configure them. Someone is going to disrupt this space soon and whoever does I think will make a unicorn. Just my guess.