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

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#161

Post by jandrese » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 4:42 AM UTC

hollerith wrote: post #100

aphextron wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

I don't disagree with your post, but you shouldn't use the Zumwalt class as an example because the US has decided to stop production of it after 3 ships. For a citation see the bottom of the section https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zumwalt-class_destroyer#Backgr...

I don't think the Zumwalt was ever meant to be a mass production ship. I think it was built the prove the concept of lower signature vessels. Notably it's too small and lightly armed to accomplish most Navy objectives. The stealth technology makes it hard to modify for specific objectives.

Basically, what are you going to do with a Zumwalt that you couldn't do with a submarine? Is it better at any of those tasks than a conventional destroyer?

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#162

Post by nickpsecurity » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 4:46 AM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #114

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/

It’s a bit ironic that a decade or two ago, there was a drive to make software development look more like hardware development (as if it were somehow better), but the trend has swung all the way around.

And stuff like Cleanroom worked to get the defect rate really low. The formal tooling of things like SPARK are pretty amazing now. Few adopted it but it happened. And like Karrot_Kream says, there's a small subset actually using those kinds of methods to their benefit. It's more than "dozens." Not mainstream by far, though.

http://infohost.nmt.edu/~al/cseet-paper.html

http://www.spark-2014.org/uploads/itp_2014_r610.pdf

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#163

Post by WalterBright » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 4:53 AM UTC

seattleeng wrote: post #159

WalterBright wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I designed the ABEL language back in the 80's for compiling designs targeted at programmable logic arrays and gate arrays. It was very successful, but it died after a decade or so. It'd probably be around today and up to date if it was open source. A shame it isn't. I don't even know who owns the rights to it these days, or if whoever owns it even knows they have the rights to it, due to spinoffs and mergers.

I think you'd be surprised. I went to Caltech (graduated 2014), which is a fairly well known university for their Electrical Engineering program, and I learned ABEL in my Sophomore/Junior year. My instructor, an admittedly old school hardware engineer, was in love with the language and had it as part of our upper level digital design curriculum for a few labs. FWIW, I think it was super intuitive and a hugely valuabl…

Thanks very much for the kind words!

Perhaps you can ask the professor for who has the copyright on ABEL now? So we can ask the holder if it can be open sourced.

Miracles like this do happen - last year Symantec allowed the Symantec C++ compiler to be fully open sourced!

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#164

Post by seanmcdirmid » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 4:53 AM UTC

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #150

fjsolwmv wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was this drive?

Using contracts, random verification, and formal verification methods to ensure the integrity of software blocks, I believe. There's still dozens of us out there, heh.

Not just that, but there was a genuine effort to make programming more like connecting together components on a board.

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#165

Post by nickpsecurity » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 4:54 AM UTC

civilitty wrote: post #81

solarkraft wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the large designers (AMD, Apple, Mediatek) don't have their own fabs. You would "just" need to order a design made - probably for hundreds of thousands of chips to make any sense. Is there information on what this step would actually require?

First, you have to choose your feature size and manufacturer based on your specs because that will lock down your available cell library. Cell libraries are an abstraction over the masks/dopants and describe how to fab the transistors and higher level logic gates, made by each manufacturer for each feature size. STM, TSMC, Global Foundries, etc. have their own cell libraries and each process node gets a different one…

There's also S-ASIC's like eASIC provides on 45nm and 28nm. What do you think about that in today's market?

(No affiliation. I find this option interesting with the varied responses I get on the topic. Triad Semi was another interesting option in this space.)

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#166

Post by WalterBright » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 4:56 AM UTC

seattleeng wrote: post #160

drblast wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holy shit, around 2005/6 I took an EE class in programmable logic that used ABEL for the labs. I couldn't find any information on it anywhere and all we had to learn the language was an old single-page photocopy of an example that had been re-copied so many times it was barely readable. And the ends of the lines were cut off. Needless to say, the ABEL projects were frustrating...indeed a shame that it's not open sour…

Did you go to Caltech by any chance?

Yes:

http://walterbright.com/

But my degree is ME, not CS nor EE.

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#167

Post by lostlogin » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 4:56 AM UTC

garmaine wrote: post #139

Koshkin wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window .

How does that apply here?

I believe the question is “does the spending result in a net benefit to society?”

I’d add in a consideration of the opportunity cost.

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#168

Post by TylerH » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 4:57 AM UTC

seattleeng wrote: post #159

WalterBright wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I designed the ABEL language back in the 80's for compiling designs targeted at programmable logic arrays and gate arrays. It was very successful, but it died after a decade or so. It'd probably be around today and up to date if it was open source. A shame it isn't. I don't even know who owns the rights to it these days, or if whoever owns it even knows they have the rights to it, due to spinoffs and mergers.

I think you'd be surprised. I went to Caltech (graduated 2014), which is a fairly well known university for their Electrical Engineering program, and I learned ABEL in my Sophomore/Junior year. My instructor, an admittedly old school hardware engineer, was in love with the language and had it as part of our upper level digital design curriculum for a few labs. FWIW, I think it was super intuitive and a hugely valuabl…

But academia is not the professional world, it's the opposite...

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#169

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 5:01 AM UTC

taneq wrote: post #133

extralego wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems very similar to how Restaurants and grocery stores throw food out instead of giving it to shelters and homeless people. It’s a common corporate policy in the US. The only justification seems to be that if they gave it away, they might miss out on some otherwise potential sales.

I think there's also liability issues, like if they give away food and someone gets salmonella poisoning or has an allergic reaction or something then they could get sued. It sucks but it's not completely arbitrary.

[deleted]

Re: Darpa invests $100M in a silicon compiler

#170

Post by mdeg » Sat, Jun 30, 2018, 5:18 AM UTC

0x00000000 wrote: post #109

rickycook wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and why do they have to? in australia we have CSIRO which does some amazing research, and our military budget is basically non existent compared to the US military budget

Australian defense budget is 36 billion [1] with a GDP of 1.2 trillion. US defense budget is 600 billion with a GDP of 18 trillion. It is just about the exact same percent of GDP. [1] https://www.pyneonline.com.au/media-centre/media-releases/a-...

If you read the sentence just before it, 2% of GDP is the growth target: "[...] the Defence budget growing to two per cent of GDP by 2020–21". The $36b number is the target value in 2020-2021, not right now. The current US defence budget is 3.1% of GDP.

As a percentage of total government expenditure, Australia spends 6% on defence and the US spends 16%.