Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler • Hacker News Board

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#31

Post by mehrdadn » Fri, Jun 29, 2018, 10:05 PM UTC

killjoywashere wrote: post #27

GW150914 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guns and bombs are cheap. The Zumwalt, F-35, B-2, and more are not cheap. I would point out that “smart” bombs and cruise missiles are not cheap, and the cost really starts to add up. Nuclear weapons research, production, and maintenance isn’t cheap. So really it’s fair to say that guns and bombs aren’t cheap, but they are also a distraction from the delivery systems, which are catastrophically expensive. the point i…

> avoid boondoggles The DoD budget, as usually reported, generally doesn't include funding allocated for specific operations (e.g. the Afghan or Iraq conflicts). > focus on proven tech The average soldier has always wanted proven tech. But what they really need (and what the officers ask for) is training. More HUMVEEs and Arleigh Burke destroyers, fewer wheel 4.0s and Zumwalts. We are at the top of a power curve with…

> We are at the top of a power curve with regard to total dollars spent, but we actually about 4th in terms of defense spending as a percent GDP

Any reason why percent GDP is the right metric? If we're normalizing I would've expected per capita instead.

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#32

Post by gmueckl » Fri, Jun 29, 2018, 10:05 PM UTC

dalbasal wrote: post #18

I have questions, if anyone knows something about hardware. What would a "silicon compiler" let one do? What exactly gets easier/cheaper and what exactly could new chip designs yield?

I only have a vague idea aboutthe first two of your questions: I guess they use the term silicon compiler as a description of an ideal state in chip synthesis software where you can go from high level logic descriptions (VHDL source) to the final chip masks without any human intervention. Right now, this requires a lot of manual work in intermediate stages of the process. Being able to do away with that would simplify and speed up the process. But this also means tackling pretty nasty NP complete optimization problems.

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#33

Post by vkou » Fri, Jun 29, 2018, 10:10 PM UTC

aphextron wrote: post #23

GW150914 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guns and bombs are cheap. The Zumwalt, F-35, B-2, and more are not cheap. I would point out that “smart” bombs and cruise missiles are not cheap, and the cost really starts to add up. Nuclear weapons research, production, and maintenance isn’t cheap. So really it’s fair to say that guns and bombs aren’t cheap, but they are also a distraction from the delivery systems, which are catastrophically expensive. the point i…

>The Zumwalt, F-35, B-2, and more are not cheap. You're right, they sure aren't. But as a result no other military force on earth besides NATO has the capability to launch air superiority fighters from amphibious assault ships, and perform multi-ton circumglobal bombing sorties. That kind of capability doesn't come cheap, and shouldn't be dismissed. Take away the B2 and we are fighting to-to-toe with Russian/Chinese…

If the US military is, in any serious way, going toe-to-toe with Russian/Chinese bombers, I hope you've got your fallout shelter stocked, because as likely as not, both sides in the conflict will cease to exist ~20 minutes after that point in time.

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#34

Post by mips_avatar » Fri, Jun 29, 2018, 10:11 PM UTC

ProAm wrote: post #9

killjoywashere wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The DoD budget exceeds Google's market cap, and their research budget exceeds Google's annual revenue.

But they dont spend it nearly as efficiently. Gov is slow and bloated. It's why government contracts are so coveted, lots of money, long term contracts, overages are just part of life.

Ok but if 200 planes need to be upgraded so that they don't get shot down by ____ new weapon. It's not possible to build an ASIC for this, so you're probably looking at doing something on an FPGA. You need a few FPGA hardware engineers, electrical engineers, software engineers. Even if the project only takes a year to design, build, and test. And then you spend an extra 6 months because xilinx's fpga tools basically don't work. You've got minimum $1 million dollars in salary, and that's not including the facility, materials, and testing costs. Even if the program costs $20 million, if it saves 40 planes, you can't tell a dead airmen's family that their loved ones life wasn't worth $500,000.

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#35

Post by hardwarefriend » Fri, Jun 29, 2018, 10:12 PM UTC

dalbasal wrote: post #18

I have questions, if anyone knows something about hardware. What would a "silicon compiler" let one do? What exactly gets easier/cheaper and what exactly could new chip designs yield?

It's difficult for me to be sure, since the article makes it sound as if they're attempting something novel, but synthesis tools are standard in ASIC/FPGA design flows.

Currently, the best synthesis tools are closed-source and extremely expensive. Imagine the benefit of having gcc/clang be free software. That is the kind of effect that is at stake here.

Usually, hardware designers will write RTL code (Verilog/VHDL) which describes the hardware slightly above the gate level. In order to turn this description into a web of logic gates (called a netlist), the design is processed by a synthesizing program. The produced netlist describes exactly how many AND, NAND, OR, etc. gates are used and how they're connected, but it doesn't actually describe where the gates are placed on the chip or the route the interconnections take to connect the gates. To generate that info, the netlist is fed into another synthesis tool (usually called place and route).

This is a simplified version, but even at this level of detail, there are important factors affecting chips. - How many gates? (less might be better) - How far are the gates from each other? (closer is better; less power, area, cost, timing) - How often will the gates switch? (less is better) - More....

More advanced synthesis tools improve area, cost, power, timing. They also allow designers to have less expertise and still obtain the same result as experienced designers by optimizing out micro-level inefficiencies in the design (though experienced designers will also lean on the synthesis tool).

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#36

Post by mips_avatar » Fri, Jun 29, 2018, 10:14 PM UTC

ingenieroariel wrote: post #11

archgoon wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you're familiar with this space and this guy; any thoughts you'd like to share?

I'll bite but consider all I write poorly informed wild speculation. The person he mentions has been behind a lot of advancements in both getting cheap FPGA based boards to the hands of users and creating libre silicon-proven IP. He recently left his company that was making Zedboards and Parallella among other things to join DARPA. The last big project he seemed to have worked on was a 1000-core processor of which a…

I wish FPGA design tools just worked...

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#37

Post by mips_avatar » Fri, Jun 29, 2018, 10:16 PM UTC

adrianmonk wrote: post #12

So it costs $500 million every time someone designs a SoC and (before now) nobody has spent $100 million trying to make that more efficient?

Yeah when I first read the headline i thought it said 100 Billion, now i'm a little dissapointed

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#38

Post by mips_avatar » Fri, Jun 29, 2018, 10:16 PM UTC

wcrichton wrote: post #30

My advisor at Stanford is working on an open-source hardware toolchain to solve these exact problems. The Agile Hardware Center is trying to bring software methodologies of rapid prototyping and pervasive code sharing/reuse to ASICs, CGRAs, and FPGAs: https://aha.stanford.edu/

Any tips on getting started with FPGA on custom pcbs?

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#39

Post by rolandog » Fri, Jun 29, 2018, 10:17 PM UTC

aphextron wrote: post #8

mmiller9 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sincerely doubt our enormously bloated defense budget is because of research...

Guns and bombs are cheap. Everyone has plenty of them. The power of our military is in force prjoection; that is, the ability to use those guns and bombs anywhere at any time. That requires massive, sustained logistics spending. To the point it may seem absurd and wasteful. But the alternative is fighting a fair fight on equal footing. I’d rather not do that.

But doesn't that mean that it would be cheaper for an adversary to just wait until the excessive military spending makes the US implode, figuratively, in debt? This same concern worried former president Eisenhower back in his days[0].

A similar argument is usually touted regarding the economic strain that the 'Space Race' caused the U.S.S.R.[1].

[0] "The Cold War: An International History", p. 42-43 https://books.google.com/books?id=Yv2FAgAAQBAJ&lpg=PA43&pg=P...

[1] "Comparison of US and Estimated Soviet Expenditures for Space Programs", p. 3-4, https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000316255....

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#40

Post by riku_iki » Fri, Jun 29, 2018, 10:17 PM UTC

killjoywashere wrote: post #27

GW150914 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guns and bombs are cheap. The Zumwalt, F-35, B-2, and more are not cheap. I would point out that “smart” bombs and cruise missiles are not cheap, and the cost really starts to add up. Nuclear weapons research, production, and maintenance isn’t cheap. So really it’s fair to say that guns and bombs aren’t cheap, but they are also a distraction from the delivery systems, which are catastrophically expensive. the point i…

> avoid boondoggles The DoD budget, as usually reported, generally doesn't include funding allocated for specific operations (e.g. the Afghan or Iraq conflicts). > focus on proven tech The average soldier has always wanted proven tech. But what they really need (and what the officers ask for) is training. More HUMVEEs and Arleigh Burke destroyers, fewer wheel 4.0s and Zumwalts. We are at the top of a power curve with…

> , (I think we're around 5th). Soft power remains our major advantage. Not that bad when you consider our outsize role in world military affairs. > https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2015/06/25/the-bi....

Your link says US is 4th in list of selected countries, not in the world. On this page US not in the top: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_...