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A New Golden Age for Computer Architecture

cacm.acm.org

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Re: A New Golden Age for Computer Architecture

#41

Post by Symmetry »

gbrown_ wrote: post #16
cbkeller wrote: post #6

Interesting article with a lot of great historical context. I think a significant part of the tl;dr is that the end of Dennard Scaling and trouble with Moore's law may mean that the best architecture will finally win out, rather than just the one with the best semiconductor design team behind it. I'm a bit skeptical of the promise of DSAs, though it does seem we're already going that way. Curious what others think on…

I agree, my concern is where do DSAs go in a few generations? How many efficiency/performance gains can be had before hitting the same limits hampering general purpose processors today?

A DSA is only going to be an order of magnitude or two more performant than a general computer on any given process node. They'll certainly slow down at the same time general purpose CPUs slow down. The thing is it makes more sense to design and include them in a world where transistors are potentially getting cheaper without getting better because a finite amount of engineering effort will be stretched across a longer timeframe.

Re: A New Golden Age for Computer Architecture

#42

Post by mpweiher »

4thaccount wrote: post #29
mpweiher wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transputer. Hardware multitasking and link-communication and a very compact instruction set. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transputer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XCore_Architecture SOAR (Smalltalk On A RISC), though the conclusion there was mostly that a plain old RISC will do. I wonder if that is still true today. Rekursiv OO computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rekursiv NEC dataflow processor. https://books.goo…

Never heard of SOAR. It would be pretty sweet though to have a powerful & multi-core chip running a Smalltalk OS that could do something with all the cores. I'd also like to see kOS from Arthur Whitney if he ever finishes it, although I'd never be able to afford any of their products.

https://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/1986/CSD-86-287...

https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/association-for-computing-machin...

http://digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/techreports/ucb/text/E...

Looking at the results, they say that hardware tag-checking for integer arithmetic and register windows for fast method calls were the two most important features of the design, nearly doubling performance.

I wonder if that still holds today, with the memory wall so dominant that CPUs tend to be stalled quite a bit (therefore enough time to do tag checking in software).

Re: A New Golden Age for Computer Architecture

#43

Post by Tor3 »

imtringued wrote: post #34
ghaff wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume they’re counting them as RISC cores plus microcode that makes them compatible with older x86 CISC designs. Modern x86 is RISC under the covers by any meaningful definition-/and also shares pretty much all the problems.

I don't know why this gets thrown around but it's completely wrong. RISC and CISC are about instruction set architecture. As soon as you have crossed the decoder boundary you are deep into micro architecture territory where the ISA is completely irrelevant because you can use the same techniques regardless of whether you have RISC or CISC. Now if one would take what you said at face value then it would actually imply…

ARM doesn't make any ARM chips, they just design them. Licensees make them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arm_Holdings

Re: A New Golden Age for Computer Architecture

#44

Post by robin_reala »

ChucklesNorris wrote: post #14

I think back to the old Cat Stevens song "I Want To Live In A Wigwam", except now I think maybe one day I'd like to live in a Faraday cage. Computers, like guns, drugs, and any other invention of man are not inherently evil. All these things can be used for good or evil. Unfortunately, the fly in the ointment is human nature. With the convergence of cheaper but increased computing power and the monetization of person…

Every country already taxes people on the miles they drive, as every country has a fuel tax.

Re: A New Golden Age for Computer Architecture

#45

Post by naasking »

ansible wrote: post #21
pjc50 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What specifically is "wrong" with CMOS? Not small enough for you yet? :)

Reaching "the end of Moore's Law" is a super big deal, and I still don't understand why people aren't worried about it more in general. It will cause a crash in the entire tech industry, which will throw the global economy into a depression.

> It will cause a crash in the entire tech industry, which will throw the global economy into a depression.

Why?

Re: A New Golden Age for Computer Architecture

#46

Post by naasking »

gbrown_ wrote: post #17

I'd hardly call this a "Golden Age", precisely because of the shortcomings mentioned in the article. Regardless of how you may re-architect a processor you will still end up hitting CMOS limitations in time. To contrast my fantasy for "Golden Age" would be multiple viable replacements for CMOS that were actively being used in a variety of processors.

Modern arch has various inefficiencies which would be solved if we shifted focus to more parallelism and less complicated processors (maybe something like Amorphous Computing). This requires a different programming model from the sequential, imperative paradigm though.

Re: A New Golden Age for Computer Architecture

#48

Post by akshayn »

insulanian wrote: post #5

I remember being excited about The Machine [1] from HP: "The Machine will be a complete replacement for current computer system architectures. There will be a new operating system, a new type of memory (memristors), and super-fast buses/peripheral interconnects (photonics)." "HP says it will commercialize The Machine within a few years, “or fall on its face trying.”" It seems later happened... [1] https://www.extreme…

While HP's "The Machine" specifically appears to never have gone beyond the marketing phase, I think your excitement about the underlying technologies - silicon photonics combined with nonvolative memory combined with resource disaggregation - is valid [0], and they are probably coming.

You can buy NVM today [1], and building systems for resource disaggregation work is an active problem [2].

[0] https://www.usenix.org/conference/fast14/technical-sessions/...

[1] https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/memory-stor...

[2] https://www.usenix.org/system/files/osdi18-shan.pdf

Re: A New Golden Age for Computer Architecture

#49

Post by jakamau »

robin_reala wrote: post #44
ChucklesNorris wrote: post #14

I think back to the old Cat Stevens song "I Want To Live In A Wigwam", except now I think maybe one day I'd like to live in a Faraday cage. Computers, like guns, drugs, and any other invention of man are not inherently evil. All these things can be used for good or evil. Unfortunately, the fly in the ointment is human nature. With the convergence of cheaper but increased computing power and the monetization of person…

Every country already taxes people on the miles they drive, as every country has a fuel tax.

A fuel tax isn't effectively a tax on mileage, nor is it an effective tax for offsetting infrastructure costs. An increase in axle weight causes an exponential increase in damage to infrastructure (the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials uses a "fourth-power" rule). Increased fuel economy also has unintended consequences leading to fuel taxes under-funding the infrastructure repairs.

You essentially have heavy-duty or commercial trucks that don't "pay their weigh" and hyper efficient hybrids and EVs that don't "pay their way" when it comes to infrastructure costs.

So fuel tax isn't equivalent to a tax on "miles driven," it might be better suited to off-setting air pollution (pure conjecture on my part), but if you wanted everyone to be responsible for the damage they cause to public infrastructure, you would need some weird calculus of axle-weight/mile driven tax.

Or we could decide major roads/infrastructure are an economic public good worthy of paying taxes on.

Re: A New Golden Age for Computer Architecture

#50

Post by ChucklesNorris »

robin_reala wrote: post #44
ChucklesNorris wrote: post #14

I think back to the old Cat Stevens song "I Want To Live In A Wigwam", except now I think maybe one day I'd like to live in a Faraday cage. Computers, like guns, drugs, and any other invention of man are not inherently evil. All these things can be used for good or evil. Unfortunately, the fly in the ointment is human nature. With the convergence of cheaper but increased computing power and the monetization of person…

Every country already taxes people on the miles they drive, as every country has a fuel tax.

The difference is pay at the pump or pay via what your car's embedded GPS is reporting. GPS also allows them to know when and where you were speeding, and since Sweden went cashless, they can simply deduct the fines from your bank account. Compliance is irrelevant.

If having a GPS device on your person becomes law, then avoiding the tax by riding a bicycle, walking, riding a horse etc is defeated.

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