Hmmm... It seems to me that the Cell is of no use for Novamente cognition, but could be of great use for a sense-perception front-end for Novamente
Novamente cognition would make better use of efficient MIMD parallelism, rather than this kind of SIMD parallelism... ben > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Behalf Of Stephen Reed > Sent: Tuesday, February 08, 2005 9:26 AM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [agi] Cell > > > The published hardware description of the Cell SPUs: 128 bit vector > engines, 128 registers each, matches the published Freescale AltiVec > processor architecture. I've looked over the programmer's documentation > for that processor and believe that vector processing is of limited > usefulness for the typical Cyc knowledge base instruction trace. As you > know, vector computations are well suited for fine-grained parallelism in > which a single operation is applied simultaneously to multiple operands. > In Cyc, there are more opportunities for large-grained > inference parallelism as opposed to fine-grained parallelism. > > As the Cell programming model unfolds, it will be interesting to see just > how much entertainment (game) AI programming will use the Cell SPUs as > compared to using the Cell's conventional Power-derived GPU. I predict > that no game AI algorithm will use the SPUs. This could be verified by > examining the marketing claims of the game development code > libraries that > are sure to appear in the next couple of years. > > Generally, I find that the Cell architecture is further evidence that > Moore's Law performance expectations will hold for several more > lithography nodes (process technology generations). In particular, the > use of chip area for multiple cores as opposed to simply more cache > memory is a step in the right direction. A spreadsheet I maintain > predicts that the x86 architecture will be 256 cores per chip at the 3.76 > nanometer node, in the year 2022, which is nine lithography generations > from now. My assumption is that the number of cores will double with > each lithography generation, and that Intel will continue to migrate to a > new generation every two years. It would suit Cyc-style AI processing > best, if multi-core CPUs evolved in the direction of high performance > MIMD (multiple instruction, multiple data) integer processing, as > compared to the Cell SIMD (single instruction, multiple data) floating > point processing. > > Cheers. > -Steve > > > On Tue, 8 Feb 2005, Eugen Leitl wrote: > > > > > I presume everyone here is aware that the Cell architecture has been > > officially announced. Technical details (as opposed to > speculations gleaned > > off patents) are yet scarce, but there's definitely some promise this > > architecture becomes mainstream sometime within next two years. > > > > What are you going to do with it? > > > > > > -- > =========================================================== > Stephen L. Reed phone: 512.342.4036 > Cycorp, Suite 100 fax: 512.342.4040 > 3721 Executive Center Drive email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Austin, TX 78731 web: http://www.cyc.com > download OpenCyc at http://www.opencyc.org > =========================================================== > > ------- > To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate > your subscription, > please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > ------- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
