[Beowulf] Teraflop chip hints at the future

[Robert G. Brown]

On Tue, 13 Feb 2007, Richard Walsh wrote:

> To abondon von Neuman you have to abandon the cyclic re-referencing of
> the same store and "store" results in-wire or along the path defined by a 
> code
> customed data-flow processor.  Them you eliminate as much of the memory

Or perhaps you have to move to

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computing

This actually moves you into an entirely different class of
computational complexity, a process that is so intrinsically parallel
that it is actually quite difficult and immensely expensive to express
it serially!

Just for the fun of it, mind you.  Although there are definitely plenty
of people working on this very hard, and I'm guessing that we'll start
seeing this within 1-2 decades if not sooner.  Not every problem maps
well into it, but the ones that do...

    rgb

> reference latency as possible.  The problem/question is how much of the
> given applications kernel can you swallow on a single chip before having to
> got back to some kind of general memory for data or instructions.  I like the 
> idea
> of an array of FPGA cores on a chip (super-FPGA model).  Less wasted
> hardware.  In some sense, these super, multi-mini-core designs are another
> ASIC hammer looking for a nail.  Fixed instruction architectures ultimately
> waste hardware.   Why not program the processor instead of instructions
> for a predefined one-size fits all ASIC?
>
> But I suppose the industry has to get there somehow ... and super-multi-mini
> core is one way.  The RAW processor already mapped out the benefits of
> this approach, but I think they are just a mile post on the way to a super 
> FPGA
> model.  I think every one should be learning to program in Mitrion-C ... ;-).
>
> rbw
>
>

-- 
Robert G. Brown	                       http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/
Duke University Dept. of Physics, Box 90305
Durham, N.C. 27708-0305
Phone: 1-919-660-2567  Fax: 919-660-2525     email:rgb at phy.duke.edu