Chisel - Hardware Construction Language from UC Berkeley
- Thread starter Daniel Payne
- Start date
I
ippisl
Guest
This is the best demonstration of the potential of chisel: rex computing , a cpu startup is talking about building chips(using chisel) with 10x better perf/power :
"“When Intel does this, they have 300 or more people on many teams over 18 months. We’re doing it with five on a tight schedule,”[1]
[1]http://www.nextplatform.com/2015/07/22/supercomputer-chip-startup-scores-funding-darpa-contract/
"“When Intel does this, they have 300 or more people on many teams over 18 months. We’re doing it with five on a tight schedule,”[1]
[1]http://www.nextplatform.com/2015/07/22/supercomputer-chip-startup-scores-funding-darpa-contract/
Bernard Murphy
Moderator
I liked this part:
“It takes 4200 picojoules to move 64 bits from DRAM to registers while it only takes 100 picojoules to do a double-precision floating point operation. It’s over 40x more energy to move the data than to actually operate on it. What most people would assume is that most of that 4200 picojoules is being used in going off-chip, but in reality, about 60% of that energy usage is being consumed by the on-chip cache hierarchy because of all of the extra gates and wires on the chip that the electrons go through. We are removing that 60%.”
“It takes 4200 picojoules to move 64 bits from DRAM to registers while it only takes 100 picojoules to do a double-precision floating point operation. It’s over 40x more energy to move the data than to actually operate on it. What most people would assume is that most of that 4200 picojoules is being used in going off-chip, but in reality, about 60% of that energy usage is being consumed by the on-chip cache hierarchy because of all of the extra gates and wires on the chip that the electrons go through. We are removing that 60%.”
Daniel Payne
Moderator
I'm not so sure about how a 28nm CPU in 2016 is going to change the computing world, it sounds more like a proof of concept for yet another ISA.
Bernard Murphy
Moderator
Daniel - it seems this is the key value prop:
The compiler understands where data will need to be at different points and it inserts it where it should go instead of leaving it in DRAM and letting the chip’s memory management units fetch it when it needs to in an inefficient big handful—and with data included that likely will not be used anyway
Of course no saying it will be successful. Getting DARPA funding is probably not a good indicator of near-term fame and fortune, but the approach is an interesting twist on current expectations that the hardware has to figure out how to optimize memory accesses.
The compiler understands where data will need to be at different points and it inserts it where it should go instead of leaving it in DRAM and letting the chip’s memory management units fetch it when it needs to in an inefficient big handful—and with data included that likely will not be used anyway
Of course no saying it will be successful. Getting DARPA funding is probably not a good indicator of near-term fame and fortune, but the approach is an interesting twist on current expectations that the hardware has to figure out how to optimize memory accesses.
Last edited:
I
ippisl
Guest
Daniel, patience. it might take some time. But let's say they do have a great technology. Do you really see a realistic path for 14/20nm chip as the first chip in the current VC environment ?
I
ippisl
Guest
Daniel, this might also be relevant to your list[1], allowing non experts to develop stuff like full wifi radios, rapidly.
[1]http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/ziria/
[1]http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/ziria/
Daniel Payne
Moderator
Thanks for the link. I didn't know that Microsoft Research had anything Open Source.
grammacomphel
New member
Excuse me, the link of the open source tool list is broken, could you fix it, please?
Daniel Payne
Moderator
Stand by, we migrated the site from vBulletin to WordPress and that wiki is missing.
grammacomphel
New member
Thank you.
Daniel Payne
Moderator
I started to recreate this wiki, now found at https://semiwiki.com/wikis/industry-wikis/eda-open-source-tools-wiki/
grammacomphel
New member
Thank you!