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Parallella, a $99 Linux Supercomputer

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Re: Parallella, a $99 Linux Supercomputer

#91

Post by ZenoArrow »

wmf wrote: post #68
phaet0n wrote: post #50

I'm really disappointed about how shallow the discussions about Adapteva are, and have been, on HN. To remind everyone, the H = hacker. This device is a godsend, as far as I'm concerned. For the first time ever I get fully documented access to compute array on chip. No the architecture wasn't designed for anything specific, like graphics, but that means I don't get bogged down in details I don't care about, like some…

ask what future things having something like this on a SoC would enable. I asked that and came up blank. And I haven't seen answers from anyone else, either. Has Adapteva themselves shown any examples where their chip beats a GPU?

You're approaching the question from a different angle. The key word is SoC. Think embedded performance, rather than desktop performance.

Just to give you a few examples... OpenCV for robotics platforms, cheap low-power SDR capable of transmission, SIP encryption and compression. One might argue you could stick a GPU in a robot, I'd personally want something better suited to the task (lower power).

Re: Parallella, a $99 Linux Supercomputer

#92

Post by new299 »

rayiner wrote: post #57
swalsh wrote: post #34

There's so much negativity in this thread, wasn't the whole idea that these guys had plans and an architecture to scale up to the order of a terra-flop by 2014, and 20 by 2022? And look! they're shipping. This first chip may not be impressive, but I'll welcome a new player to the market who has big plans to innovate.

I don't get the negativity either. If you look at the architecture manual, this is like a cheap Tilera. It's an interesting programming model (lots of cores in a shared memory SMP with weak memory ordering), and the CPU's are pretty vanilla RISC architectures. For $99, it's a great way to play with something that has the properties of the kinds of CPU's you might see in a future supercomputer.

I wrote my notes up here last time this was doing the rounds: http://41j.com/blog/2012/10/my-take-on-the-adapteva-parallel...

I'm pretty skeptical, having played with the Tilera I'm not sure it gives you enough of a benefit to warrant the extra effort. The Parallella also looks a lot like a Tilera, I do wonder if there might be IP issues there down the line.

I also still think our best bet for this kind of thing is multicore ARM systems.

Re: Parallella, a $99 Linux Supercomputer

#93

Post by wmf »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #91
wmf wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ask what future things having something like this on a SoC would enable. I asked that and came up blank. And I haven't seen answers from anyone else, either. Has Adapteva themselves shown any examples where their chip beats a GPU?

You're approaching the question from a different angle. The key word is SoC. Think embedded performance, rather than desktop performance. Just to give you a few examples... OpenCV for robotics platforms, cheap low-power SDR capable of transmission, SIP encryption and compression. One might argue you could stick a GPU in a robot, I'd personally want something better suited to the task (lower power).

I fundamentally disagree that SoCs are different than desktop technology. They're just smaller. High-end architectures are already driven to be as power-efficient as possible, so when you cut them down they're still efficient. For example, Kabini is an "SoC" that has the same GCN CU as a "desktop" Kaveri or a discrete Radeon.

Re: Parallella, a $99 Linux Supercomputer

#94

Post by cantankerous »

phaet0n wrote: post #50

I'm really disappointed about how shallow the discussions about Adapteva are, and have been, on HN. To remind everyone, the H = hacker. This device is a godsend, as far as I'm concerned. For the first time ever I get fully documented access to compute array on chip. No the architecture wasn't designed for anything specific, like graphics, but that means I don't get bogged down in details I don't care about, like some…

I'm so stoked about this board! I've been really wanting to have a board to try out hybrid computing/HPC with for a long time now, but everything has been a bit beyond my reach/justification pricewise. I got so excited about this board reading about it. The sky is the limit with this hardware, and now it'll that much more available to everybody.

Thinking about everything I can do with this board is making my head explode!

Re: Parallella, a $99 Linux Supercomputer

#95

Post by ZenoArrow »

wmf wrote: post #68
phaet0n wrote: post #50

I'm really disappointed about how shallow the discussions about Adapteva are, and have been, on HN. To remind everyone, the H = hacker. This device is a godsend, as far as I'm concerned. For the first time ever I get fully documented access to compute array on chip. No the architecture wasn't designed for anything specific, like graphics, but that means I don't get bogged down in details I don't care about, like some…

ask what future things having something like this on a SoC would enable. I asked that and came up blank. And I haven't seen answers from anyone else, either. Has Adapteva themselves shown any examples where their chip beats a GPU?

"I fundamentally disagree that SoCs are different than desktop technology. They're just smaller. High-end architectures are already driven to be as power-efficient as possible, so when you cut them down they're still efficient. For example, Kabini is an "SoC" that has the same GCN CU as a "desktop" Kaveri or a discrete Radeon."

You didn't really read what I said did you. A key factor for embedded electronics is power draw. Based on a quick Google, AMD Kabini is using approximately 15W of power: http://techreport.com/news/24186/new-details-early-benchmark...

On the other hand, the 64-core Parallella is using approximately 2W: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/adapteva/parallella-a-su...

Hope you can start to see the difference now.

Re: Parallella, a $99 Linux Supercomputer

#97

Post by bilbo0s »

phaet0n wrote: post #50

I'm really disappointed about how shallow the discussions about Adapteva are, and have been, on HN. To remind everyone, the H = hacker. This device is a godsend, as far as I'm concerned. For the first time ever I get fully documented access to compute array on chip. No the architecture wasn't designed for anything specific, like graphics, but that means I don't get bogged down in details I don't care about, like some…

"...I'll use OpenCL so I can be hardware agnostic..."

Woah now...

Using OpenCL is imminently sensible for a large swath of applications. And "Hardware Agnosticism" is beneficial for a large number of reasons. This is only the first "accessible" platform that has been released... we can expect many, many more. DSL -> asm on each can get a bit tiresome.

Many apps can benefit from running in more than one place. For instance, I scaled out an authoritative game server using OpenCL recently. Because I used OpenCL, I could run it on Amazon GPGPU instances as well as locally on the server here. Two different sets of cards... same codebase... only difference was instead of 100's of thousands of users on the local server, you can support millions on Amazon. There is something to be said for that sort of flexibility.

Couple that with a clustered vert.x event bus, and you begin to see the power such a system might bring... and that's just for a trivial application like gaming!!!

Imagine the benefits accrued to other, more complex, applications!

You should think carefully prior to being dismissive of hardware agnosticism. If you want to tinker and determine what is possible with this particular platform, by all means, use platform specific tools. However, if you want to bring the power of parallel processing to bear in solving problems wherever you find them... thinking about hardware agnosticism really is a "must-do" as my daughter would say.

Re: Parallella, a $99 Linux Supercomputer

#98

Post by ReadEvalPost »

wmf wrote: post #93
ZenoArrow wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're approaching the question from a different angle. The key word is SoC. Think embedded performance, rather than desktop performance. Just to give you a few examples... OpenCV for robotics platforms, cheap low-power SDR capable of transmission, SIP encryption and compression. One might argue you could stick a GPU in a robot, I'd personally want something better suited to the task (lower power).

I fundamentally disagree that SoCs are different than desktop technology. They're just smaller. High-end architectures are already driven to be as power-efficient as possible, so when you cut them down they're still efficient. For example, Kabini is an "SoC" that has the same GCN CU as a "desktop" Kaveri or a discrete Radeon.

ZenoArrow is talking about embedded SoCs though. While Kabini is a SoC, it isn't really suited for embedded applications. These chips usually have a ton of GPIO, built-in support for different communication protocols, analog to digital converters, a lower power draw, etc. etc.

Re: Parallella, a $99 Linux Supercomputer

#99

Post by MostAwesomeDude »

phaet0n wrote: post #50

I'm really disappointed about how shallow the discussions about Adapteva are, and have been, on HN. To remind everyone, the H = hacker. This device is a godsend, as far as I'm concerned. For the first time ever I get fully documented access to compute array on chip. No the architecture wasn't designed for anything specific, like graphics, but that means I don't get bogged down in details I don't care about, like some…

I wish to pick one nit: This is not the first chipset to be fully documented and have this sort of massively-parallel structure. GreenArrays is producing hardware right now if you want to go play: http://www.greenarraychips.com/

Re: Parallella, a $99 Linux Supercomputer

#100

Post by TallGuyShort »

rys wrote: post #2

I find it incredibly dishonest of Adapteva to equate it to a "theoretical 45 GHz CPU". There are much better ways to talk about the performance level of their hardware than that metric, especially given the rest of the text in their Kickstarter pitch is aimed at people who need to inherently understand the hardware's execution model in order to program it effectively. The computing industry has established language a…

I don't see a big difference between this and "petaflops" measurements that are the de-facto standard in bragging about supercomputers. You really only hit that peak performance for embarrassingly-parallel problems, but unless you have a specific workload or benchmark to talk about, it's the best you have and is a fairly well-accepted practice in the industry.

On a related note "petaflops" would be a great name for a pet bunny.

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