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Parallella: A Supercomputer For Everyone

kickstarter.com

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Re: Parallella: A Supercomputer For Everyone

#51

Post by adapteva »

runako wrote: post #42
deweerdt wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

could you expand?

Sure, Adapteva has raised ~$1.5mm in VC and another ~$850k in debt. Now they are raising $750k on Kickstarter, the "funding platform for creative projects." There's a big disconnect there. If well-funded companies like Adapteva are successful raising on Kickstarter, why wouldn't even bigger companies milk the Kickstarter sheep for R&D funds too? While it wouldn't violate the letter of Kickstarter rules for Intel to r…

Let's correct some of your assertions: 1.) Adapteva raised $1.5M from a small board business (not a VC) because it couldn't get a VC investor. 2.) A "well funded" semiconductor is one that takes in $100M like Calxeda. Adapteva has done "more with less" than any chip company in history. 3.) Adapteva is a chip company. The Parallella project is not an "R&D effort" it's about bringing the cost down for an open board product that the developers clearly want and that the industry needs. 4.) Adapteva has talked to >50 large institutional investors. Mostly they are either afraid of going up against Intel, Nvidia or they flat out don't invest in chips. 5.) Kickstarter is not just for non-profits.

Re: Parallella: A Supercomputer For Everyone

#52

Post by wmf »

runako wrote: post #42
deweerdt wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

could you expand?

Sure, Adapteva has raised ~$1.5mm in VC and another ~$850k in debt. Now they are raising $750k on Kickstarter, the "funding platform for creative projects." There's a big disconnect there. If well-funded companies like Adapteva are successful raising on Kickstarter, why wouldn't even bigger companies milk the Kickstarter sheep for R&D funds too? While it wouldn't violate the letter of Kickstarter rules for Intel to r…

Just like some startups raise VC for "validation" instead of money, companies are now using Kickstarter for PR. And if it's successful, people will pay you for your PR campaign.

Re: Parallella: A Supercomputer For Everyone

#53

Post by astrodust »

gavanwoolery wrote: post #49
astrodust wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If by "expensive" you mean "time-consuming to implement algorithms on" then, yes, GPGPU is still expensive. The cards themselves, though, are stupidly cheap. For $140 you can get a card with 700+ general purpose shaders that run at around 800MHz.

Yes, they are relatively cheap on their own, the only problem is the added cost of a discrete card in addition to a cpu, and potentially a better power supply to support them both. In terms of many people's budgets it is nothing, but I am talking more about the average consumer. In the end, buying a desktop with a decent discrete GPU and CPU is probably going to run you at least $800; again, not a lot, but if this co…

Don't forget that nearly all Intel desktop CPUs come bundled with some kind of embedded GPU. It's nowhere near as powerful as a separate GPU chip, but it's still able to do OpenCL. The Intel HD4000 GPU may not be state of the art, but it out-performs the CPU for GPGPU-type operations.

Re: Parallella: A Supercomputer For Everyone

#54

Post by mchusma »

runako wrote: post #42
deweerdt wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

could you expand?

Sure, Adapteva has raised ~$1.5mm in VC and another ~$850k in debt. Now they are raising $750k on Kickstarter, the "funding platform for creative projects." There's a big disconnect there. If well-funded companies like Adapteva are successful raising on Kickstarter, why wouldn't even bigger companies milk the Kickstarter sheep for R&D funds too? While it wouldn't violate the letter of Kickstarter rules for Intel to r…

I don't think a $2.35M round is really that much for a chip startup. The fact that they even think that they can plausibly launch a chip and some level of supporting documentation, software, etc for ~$3M total, that is a remarkably efficient use of funds. By the way, Kickstarter funds are "cheap" (no dilution & no debt) so anyone who can actually raise money on Kickstarter should do so.

Re: Parallella: A Supercomputer For Everyone

#55

Post by scott_s »

jacques_chester wrote: post #46
scott_s wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that people tend to abuse the term, but I think it is a performance designation. It's just a sliding performance target. A supercomputer is a computer that can achieve the upper limits of what has been achieved in performance.

And what sets those upper limits? In general: money. Buying more of the most performant equipment available. So. It's an economic designation.

Sure, you're limited by money. But if someone magically was able to produce a machine for $100 that was on par with Titan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_(supercomputer)) I would still call it a "supercomputer" until it became ubiquitous.

Re: Parallella: A Supercomputer For Everyone

#56

Post by lotyrin »

scott_s wrote: post #55
jacques_chester wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what sets those upper limits? In general: money. Buying more of the most performant equipment available. So. It's an economic designation.

Sure, you're limited by money. But if someone magically was able to produce a machine for $100 that was on par with Titan ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_(supercomputer) ) I would still call it a "supercomputer" until it became ubiquitous.

If they only had one, it doesn't matter how much it cost them to make, it's worth much much more than $100 dollars to someone. If there were enough supply that it were possible for it to be only $100 then it would have to already be ubiquitous. I agree with jacques_chester that it's an economic distinction.

Re: Parallella: A Supercomputer For Everyone

#57

Post by adapteva »

DeepDuh wrote: post #33
compilercreator wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prepare to be surprised. The die size estimate for the Epiphany IV is 10mm-sq according to Adapteva. It is more appropriate to compare it to embedded GPUs than desktop GPUs in die size, power and performance. For example, one particular embedded 40nm GPU design that I know about can deliver about 25 GFlops or so in the same die area.

Ok, so that's 6.4 cores per mm^2 while Kepler has 4.8. Not bad, considering NVIDIA has already shrunk the scheduling ressources, register blocks and cache sizes per core to a bare minimum (something I don't agree with btw.).

What do you consider a Kepler core? The Epiphany cores are dual issue RISC processors that run independent C/C++ tasks.

Re: Parallella: A Supercomputer For Everyone

#58

Post by adapteva »

alexchamberlain wrote: post #17
compilercreator wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their attempts at marketing talk are indeed very bad, but their technology is pretty interesting.

Very good way of summing it up!

Yes, agreed! We definitely got carried away with the marketing lingo and we apologize!

This was our thought process:

We have received a lot of negative feedback regarding this number so we want to explain the meaning and motivation. A single number can never characterize the performance of an architecture. The only thing that really matters is how many seconds and how many joules YOUR application consumes on a specific platform.

Still, we think multiplying the core frequency(700MHz) times the number of cores (64) is as good a metric as any. As a comparison point, the theoretical peak GFLOPS number often quoted for GPUs is really only reachable if you have an application with significant data parallelism and limited branching. Other numbers used in the past by processors include: peak GFLOPS, MIPS, Dhrystone scores, CoreMark scores, SPEC scores, Linpack scores, etc. Taken by themselves, datasheet specs mean very little. We have published all of our data and manuals and we hope it's clear what our architecture can do. If not, let us know how we can convince you.

Re: Parallella: A Supercomputer For Everyone

#59

Post by runako »

mchusma wrote: post #54
runako wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, Adapteva has raised ~$1.5mm in VC and another ~$850k in debt. Now they are raising $750k on Kickstarter, the "funding platform for creative projects." There's a big disconnect there. If well-funded companies like Adapteva are successful raising on Kickstarter, why wouldn't even bigger companies milk the Kickstarter sheep for R&D funds too? While it wouldn't violate the letter of Kickstarter rules for Intel to r…

I don't think a $2.35M round is really that much for a chip startup. The fact that they even think that they can plausibly launch a chip and some level of supporting documentation, software, etc for ~$3M total, that is a remarkably efficient use of funds. By the way, Kickstarter funds are "cheap" (no dilution & no debt) so anyone who can actually raise money on Kickstarter should do so.

I'm not qualified to evaluate how much money a modern chip startup needs to launch a product. But it's worth noting that the Kickstarter pitch doesn't mention the millions the company has raised so far (apologies if I missed that part).

>> Kickstarter funds are "cheap" (no dilution & no debt)

Of course they are, and that's kind of my point. Raising money from unsophisticated unaccredited investors without providing full disclosure or even a contract in exchange is obviously a great source of capital. However, I'm not convinced pitches like this would withstand scrutiny by the relevant regulators if they were not asleep at the switch.

I didn't mean to be overly critical of the project. I wish them all due success. That doesn't mean I can't dislike the Kickstarter campaign. (I would similarly dislike AMD raising funds on Kickstarter, even if I liked the project.)

Re: Parallella: A Supercomputer For Everyone

#60

Post by runako »

adapteva wrote: post #51
runako wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, Adapteva has raised ~$1.5mm in VC and another ~$850k in debt. Now they are raising $750k on Kickstarter, the "funding platform for creative projects." There's a big disconnect there. If well-funded companies like Adapteva are successful raising on Kickstarter, why wouldn't even bigger companies milk the Kickstarter sheep for R&D funds too? While it wouldn't violate the letter of Kickstarter rules for Intel to r…

Let's correct some of your assertions: 1.) Adapteva raised $1.5M from a small board business (not a VC) because it couldn't get a VC investor. 2.) A "well funded" semiconductor is one that takes in $100M like Calxeda. Adapteva has done "more with less" than any chip company in history. 3.) Adapteva is a chip company. The Parallella project is not an "R&D effort" it's about bringing the cost down for an open board pro…

First, I didn't mean to sound quite so negative on your project. I actually hope you succeed. If this is something the industry needs, I have no doubt you'll be a wild success.

I just take issue with raising money from unsophisticated unaccredited investors without even providing complete disclosure or binding contracts in return. I know a lot of companies do it, and I dislike it in those cases too. I also know I'm in the minority here and that it's only a matter of time before companies with huge VC backing & public companies are using Kickstarter to raise money. I think that's a bad thing, but others disagree.

Also, quickly:

- I'm not against for-profits using Kickstarter; most of the efforts there are for-profits. But companies that have raised millions of dollars probably should disclose that fact prominently in their campaigns.

- Similarly, the fact that you've been denied investment by >50 institutional investors is relevant in asking for money. It might be positive for some, negative for some. But it's likely not going to be a no-op for most.

- My figures come straight from Crunchbase, I'm not more connected than that.

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