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A New Golden Age for Computer Architecture

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Re: A New Golden Age for Computer Architecture

#71

Post by deepnotderp »

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…

Well, both Hennessy and Patterson have perpetuated the micro code and RISC myth, presumably because it suits the "RISC world domination" narrative.

Re: A New Golden Age for Computer Architecture

#72

Post by foobiekr »

Symmetry wrote: post #70
ip26 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems disingenuous though, as the two markets have totally different optimization points and volumes. More like RISC has won the low-cost, low-power market, and CISC-RISC hybrids won the performance market, or something like that. I'm sure you can think of a million other markets like this- sedans vs race cars, fighter jets vs puddle jumpers, etc.

It's really a lot more than two markets. The high end communications systems that use MIPS have almost as high performance demands as a desktop or server. And currently the highest performance core is a POWER 9. But on the other hand you have a few places where x86 Atoms have made inroads as embedded cores, as in the UR robot arms I work with. But really I think we really do overemphasize the importance of x86 becaus…

there's a really interesting market at the bottom as well - super low power CPUs. 8/16 bit stuff, not RISC at all (since DRAM itself is a huge power draw at that level), and so on. fun stuff.

Re: A New Golden Age for Computer Architecture

#73

Post by foobiekr »

mpweiher wrote: post #10
4thaccount wrote: post #2

I'm trying to think of what are some neat computer architectures out there. Chuck Moore's "Green Arrays" is kinda cool and so is the Parallela board.

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…

I don't think I'd call the transputer "hardware multitasking" so much as "integrated communications network."

For a time the T800 was the top of the FP pile. Not for long, though, and then the long, long, long wait for the disappointing T9k doomed the whole architecture.

Re: A New Golden Age for Computer Architecture

#74

Post by naasking »

ansible wrote: post #62
naasking wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The valuation of all the tech companies is based on future growth. Meaning ever increasing sales. Well, what happens when next year's smartphone really isn't any better or cheaper than last year's smartphone? Sure, there will always be some business because people drop their phones all the time, but sales won't be as high without upgrades driving it. Lots of people (investors) will be unhappy with the tech sector at…

Next year's tech will still be cheaper. If they don't have to retool for the next gen because they literally can't, then we can enjoy the economies of scale in producing the same tech over a longer period of time.

I also dispute the scope you assign to this "upgrade" cycle. It's a huge overstatement to claim that the whole tech sector would "collapse". The tech sector is far larger than phones and personal computers.

Re: A New Golden Age for Computer Architecture

#75

Post by cryptonector »

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.

The end of Moore's Law is a certainty regardless of technology. Something other than CMOS might yield smaller and more power efficient features up to a point, and beyond that point we'd be back where we are today with CMOS. We might as well start dealing with the problem more seriously, because each attempt to kick the can down the road gets more and more expensive.

Re: A New Golden Age for Computer Architecture

#76

Post by bzbarsky »

DannyB2 wrote: post #57
Symmetry wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an x86 processor in your desktop, but there are many more RISC processors doing things like controlling your hard drive. If you buy an AMD processors there's even an ARM core inside the x86 processor in the Platform Security Processor. Add in all the microwaves, routers, the many processors in your car, and so on and 99% seems a bit high to me but not unreasonable.

Smart TVs, Digital Cameras, Thermostats, Wristwatches, Phones, Tablets, Printers, Google Home devices, Amazon Echo devices, TV sticks (Chromecast, Firestick etc), Ring doorbells, security devices, etc, . . . Anything (like a Printer) with a web based interface, having a micro web server within the device. There are VASTLY more ARM and other architecture chips than there are x86/64 chips around you right now. Possibly…

> Digital Cameras

The SD card has an ARM chip, usually, in addition to whatever is in the camera itself.

Re: A New Golden Age for Computer Architecture

#77

Post by ansible »

naasking wrote: post #74
ansible wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The valuation of all the tech companies is based on future growth. Meaning ever increasing sales. Well, what happens when next year's smartphone really isn't any better or cheaper than last year's smartphone? Sure, there will always be some business because people drop their phones all the time, but sales won't be as high without upgrades driving it. Lots of people (investors) will be unhappy with the tech sector at…

Next year's tech will still be cheaper. If they don't have to retool for the next gen because they literally can't, then we can enjoy the economies of scale in producing the same tech over a longer period of time. I also dispute the scope you assign to this "upgrade" cycle. It's a huge overstatement to claim that the whole tech sector would "collapse". The tech sector is far larger than phones and personal computers.

> Next year's tech will still be cheaper. If they don't have to retool for the next gen because they literally can't, then we can enjoy the economies of scale in producing the same tech over a longer period of time.

Slightly cheaper, maybe, as the fab equipment depreciates.

> I also dispute the scope you assign to this "upgrade" cycle. It's a huge overstatement to claim that the whole tech sector would "collapse". The tech sector is far larger than phones and personal computers.

It used to be that new hardware would drive new software sales, and vice versa. You'd buy a new PC, because Windows XP ran too slow on your old one. And a couple years later, some awesome game comes out, and you'd need to buy a new PC to play it.

Expansion, not replacement (of broken systems) is what drove the PC segment. It was the foundation of the growth that affected everything that used or could benefit from PCs. And we've seen that with the mobile segment.

And we may yet see that with the VR/AR segment, but that's going to be a tough hill to climb if we can't count on continuing IC improvements.

Re: A New Golden Age for Computer Architecture

#78

Post by mpweiher »

foobiekr wrote: post #73
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…

I don't think I'd call the transputer "hardware multitasking" so much as "integrated communications network." For a time the T800 was the top of the FP pile. Not for long, though, and then the long, long, long wait for the disappointing T9k doomed the whole architecture.

>I don't think I'd call the transputer "hardware multitasking"

"A Transputer had a number of simple operating system functions built into the hardware. These included hardware multitasking with foreground and background priority levels, hardware timers, and hardware time-slicing of background tasks."

The Hardware and Software Architecture of the Transputer -- https://archive.org/details/Xputer

There are special instruction to start and end a process, and the fact that it was a stack machine means context switches were extremely fast, almost no registers to save/restore.

> so much as "integrated communications network."

It had both, and both were integrated. IIRC, the instructions to send/receive on the links were integrated with the multitasking hardware.

"The first 16 'secondary' zero-operand instructions (using the OPR primary instruction) were:

   Mnemonic Description
   REV      Reverse – swap two top items of register stack
   LB       Load byte
   BSUB     Byte subscript
   ENDP     End process
   DIFF     Difference
   ADD      Add
   GCALL    General Call – swap top of stack and instruction pointer
   IN       Input – receive message
   PROD     Product
   GT       Greater Than – the only comparison instruction
   WSUB     Word subscript
   OUT      Output – send message
   SUB      Subtract
   STARTP   Start process
   OUTBYTE  Output byte – send one-byte message
   OUTWORD  Output word – send one-word message"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transputer

Also, you could designate memory locations as local communications channels, and the same instructions would work. So the same binary could run locally or distributed.

Re: A New Golden Age for Computer Architecture

#80

Post by naasking »

ansible wrote: post #77
naasking wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Next year's tech will still be cheaper. If they don't have to retool for the next gen because they literally can't, then we can enjoy the economies of scale in producing the same tech over a longer period of time. I also dispute the scope you assign to this "upgrade" cycle. It's a huge overstatement to claim that the whole tech sector would "collapse". The tech sector is far larger than phones and personal computers.

> Next year's tech will still be cheaper. If they don't have to retool for the next gen because they literally can't, then we can enjoy the economies of scale in producing the same tech over a longer period of time. Slightly cheaper, maybe, as the fab equipment depreciates. > I also dispute the scope you assign to this "upgrade" cycle. It's a huge overstatement to claim that the whole tech sector would "collapse". Th…

> Slightly cheaper, maybe, as the fab equipment depreciates.

Sure, but the same equipment would also be cheaper to replace than the capital required for the next generation fab, for the same reasons.

> Expansion, not replacement (of broken systems) is what drove the PC segment. It was the foundation of the growth that affected everything that used or could benefit from PCs. And we've seen that with the mobile segment.

Expansion into new sectors, not expansion into the same sectors. The same will still happen. Solutions will become more customized rather than remain general purpose. There remain considerable gains in parallel computation for instance (GPU), and ASICs will become the new hotness (again).

Furthermore, if clients cease to expand, then more computation will happen on server infrastructure. Your fat clients will become more thin clients again, repeating the same cycle that has happened multiple times so far.

You're also neglecting the investment in infrastructure (data centers, networks) that will continue to grow, if not accelerate. Current hardware is more than sufficient for most of this.

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