Andrew, We really can't have this discussion without you first reading the article I posted *The Itanium Effect*, where I propose an upgraded FPGA architecture that doesn't have the problems of present-day FPGAs.
On Mon, Aug 3, 2015 at 9:01 AM, J. Andrew Rogers <[email protected]> wrote: > > For many things, FPGAs are not much (if any) faster than highly optimized > CPU code. > Of course you mean present-day FPGAs, that are lacking the things I discuss in the paper I posted *The Itanium Effect*. > There are certain code patterns for which they do offer excellent > performance but those cases are more limited than I think many people > assume. However, I can see a few use cases for the CPU+FPGA hybrids that > Intel is building. > My proposal goes WAY beyond this. Given the internals of a coarse-grained FPGA, why even have a CPU when, if that is what you want, you can simply configure the FPGA to be a CPU. > > Most codes today are limited by memory bandwidth and latency, which an > FPGA does not address. > Now, add thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of tiny memory modules to an FPGA, With these all available to work independently, memory bandwidth issues are blown away. On a side note, in the early days of minicomputers I had the pleasure/pain of working on a LINC-8, a computer that had two different instruction sets that it could switch between. One instruction set was the PDP-8 instruction set designed for general purpose computation, and the other instruction set was the LINC instruction set designed for biological laboratory computing. I implemented the DOS for these machines, that utilized a then-gigantic 32K (Yes, that is K, not M or B) hard disk. Of course the DOS had to interface with both instruction sets and run existing 4K code in its expansive 8K RAM. The I/O support for the LINC instruction set resided in the upper 4K. The first phase of the project was to crunch/optimize the existing I/O code enough to insert a bootstrap loader for the DOS, whereupon much of the remaining I/O code became overlays. This experience opened my eyes to seeing that having a strong processor available (now, like an FPGA as I described in my article) eliminated the needs for LOTS of other things. Steve =========== > > > *AGI* | Archives <https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now> > <https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/10443978-6f4c28ac> | > Modify > <https://www.listbox.com/member/?&;> > Your Subscription <http://www.listbox.com> > -- Full employment can be had with the stoke of a pen. Simply institute a six hour workday. That will easily create enough new jobs to bring back full employment. ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-f452e424 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-58d57657 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
