On 8/19/06, Timothy Miller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On 8/19/06, Jared Putnam <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> The weaknesses of GPUs are:
>
> There is no support for integers or fixed point. There is only
> fixed-function graph reduction. Output must be a two-dimensional
> array. There is no hardware support for doubles, although there are
> SIGGRAPH presentations this year about emulating them.
>
> If those can be beaten in a product costing less than the Cell, there
> will be markets. Scientific computing wants cheaper supercomputers,
> financial and statistical computing wants faster APLs,[1] game
> programmers[2] want to run "essentially functional" programs which
> transform "a small input data set to a small output data set, making
> use of large constant data structures."
>
> AGEIA is testing the market for a product that solves a sliver of that
> last problem.
My opinion is this: If the goal is to do supercomputing, then design
something that's good at supercomputing. I can see why they currently
use GPUs to do stream computing. There are lessons to be learned from
that. But the graphics nature of GPUs, I think, will soon start to
hold things back, because you're shoehorning problems into an
environment not designed to compute them.
People say "it's good to design something that is versatile" and
"there is money in supercomputing". But if there's money in
supercomputing, why not spend that money more wisely than trying to
use GPUs? Design something that throws away all of the cruft and
limitations that usually come along with the GPU.
So... we can do this (within the limits of various FTC and Dept. of
Commerce regulations, which are very scary), but we shouldn't limit
our thinking to the way people think about graphics.
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Timothy,
Like has been posted and you agreed with, I believe you need to get OGA1 and TRV10 out first. The specific problems you are fighting of course are:
---1a: Vapor ware. Lets face it there are some Really Good scam artists out there!
---1b: Hardware proof of engineering. Once you have proof that you can and will produce hardware people can buy. You then need to prove that your engineering talent and vision are up to snuff.
After you clear these two hurdles getting people to fund a Much more ambitious 2nd project should prove well within reach. Not to mention at that point you have the option of more easily hiring desirable engineering talent to aid in time to market of the next project ect...
Happy computing!
Gary
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