[rpg.314]

Originally Posted by darkblu

Apropos, is it 'the embedded architectures inability to offer compelling performance' that keeps those three PPC SoC-based machines (the 3 Blue Genes) in the current top10 of Top500 list of supercomputers?

Doubtful. Very doubtful.

[aaronspink]

Originally Posted by darkblu

E.g. I'm sure you know why Apple switched to Intel from PPC, right? Actually, I see the opposite trend these days - ARM are pushing x86 out of its traditional low-end stronghold (the netbooks) through the new generation of tablets.

PPC was a dead end? And about those ARM netbooks. Um, yeah, those are selling, I think. It is kinda hard to tell.

Apropos, is it 'the embedded architectures inability to offer compelling performance' that keeps those three PPC SoC-based machines (the 3 Blue Genes) in the current top10 of Top500 list of supercomputers?

BlueGene isn't about the cpu isa but about the network architecture like all ultra scale machines.

Come on, let's not fool outselves. Performance/power has little to with Intel's current position in the middle segment of the computational spectrum.

Actually, unless you don't care about performance, there really hasn't been anyone who has competed with x86 in performance/power.

[thop]

PowerVR graphics? No Linux support then.

[Helmore]

Originally Posted by thop

PowerVR graphics? No Linux support then.

Pretty much the only platform they're supporting is Linux.

[thop]

Where are proper GMA 500 Linux drivers then?

[Exophase]

Originally Posted by Simon F

One possible benefit of the x86 ISA over the ARM (ignoring the Thumb ISA for the moment) is that it is probably a bit denser. The savings in bus bandwidth and cache efficiency might cancel out the increased decode complexity <shrug>

That paper doesn't seriously include Thumb-2 aside from a fleeting mention. Thumb-2 is much denser that ARM with only a very small average loss in instruction efficiency (some additional small losses in other areas in current implementations). Despite being much denser, it doesn't save actually help much in icache pressure, and I doubt this applies for x86 which is probably not nearly as dense.

Originally Posted by aaronspink

Apple had people at ARM in Cambridge working on the architecture.

In 1984, when Acorn was Apple's competitor and Apple were themselves not doing that well (until Macintosh)? Oh well, let's see your source, I guess.

[aaronspink]

Originally Posted by Exophase

In 1984, when Acorn was Apple's competitor and Apple were themselves not doing that well (until Macintosh)? Oh well, let's see your source, I guess.

The whole reason it is called ARM is because of the joint development with Apple which caused them to spin out the ARM team from Acorn to allow neutral development. Apple started working on ARM basically before the first version(ARM2/3) shipped and used the second generation (ARM6 and later ARM7) in the newton. This is somewhat known in the tech industry and confirmed from multiple sources including wikipedia.

[darkblu]

Originally Posted by aaronspink

PPC was a dead end?

Far from that. Jobs grew tired of trying to spin the negative clock difference with x86. That and IBM screwed up with a bunch of deadlines for the G5 (and Moto had not been particularly stellar with their G4 deliverables either). As you say, well-known things in the industry.

And about those ARM netbooks. Um, yeah, those are selling, I think. It is kinda hard to tell.

I said 'tablets'. Not hard to tell how they sell (given there's one brand that's actually selling). Also, not hard to tell how netbooks have been affected by the foray of said tablets:


Some say a market's viability is measured by its growth. But i have no knowledge of such things.

BlueGene isn't about the cpu isa but about the network architecture like all ultra scale machines.

Fine. Are game consoles also about the network architecture?

Actually, unless you don't care about performance, there really hasn't been anyone who has competed with x86 in performance/power.

Oh wow. I wouldn't even try to comment on that.

[Laurent06]

Originally Posted by aaronspink

The whole reason it is called ARM is because of the joint development with Apple which caused them to spin out the ARM team from Acorn to allow neutral development. Apple started working on ARM basically before the first version(ARM2/3) shipped and used the second generation (ARM6 and later ARM7) in the newton. This is somewhat known in the tech industry and confirmed from multiple sources including wikipedia.

Sorry but Wikipedia on its own can't be considered as a reliable source of information.

ARM indeed was founded as a joint venture between Acorn, VLSI and Apple, by end of 1990. (ref).

ARM1 taped out in early 85, while ARM2 taped out in 86 and was used in Acorn Archimedes, and I'd be extremely surprised if you could find any reference of Apple involvement that early (though it's highly probable they were involved before the founding of ARM Ltd).

[aaronspink]

Originally Posted by Laurent06

Sorry but Wikipedia on its own can't be considered as a reliable source of information.

ARM indeed was founded as a joint venture between Acorn, VLSI and Apple, by end of 1990. (ref).

ARM1 taped out in early 85, while ARM2 taped out in 86 and was used in Acorn Archimedes, and I'd be extremely surprised if you could find any reference of Apple involvement that early (though it's highly probable they were involved before the founding of ARM Ltd).

Lets put it this way, I personally know several sources that worked for apple AT Acorn/arm. You can either believe or disbelieve.

[Helmore]

Originally Posted by thop

Where are proper GMA 500 Linux drivers then?

What I meant was that the only platform's that Intel is currently supporting are Linux based. The Intel Atom Z600 chipsets don't support Windows (XP, Vista and 7) and they don't support Windows Mobile nor is there support for Windows Phone 7. The platforms that Intel is supporting are Moblin, MeaGo, Android and they are all based on Linux.

[Laurent06]

Well I also have access to first hand sources, but it looks like both you and me can't talk too much

[Rys]

Aaron is completely correct about Apple and ARM.

thop, what would you consider a 'proper' driver here? It was Intel's choice to write their own GMA 500 driver, too.

[tangey]

Originally Posted by Helmore

What I meant was that the only platform's that Intel is currently supporting are Linux based. The Intel Atom Z600 chipsets don't support Windows (XP, Vista and 7) and they don't support Windows Mobile nor is there support for Windows Phone 7. The platforms that Intel is supporting are Moblin, MeaGo, Android and they are all based on Linux.

I think Intel will quickly follow-up with the rumoured moorestown-w, that does have PCI support and thus suitable for windows.

Remember that their recently discussed Tunnel creek Soc, that is targetting IVI and digital signage is very similar to the lincroft chip, (SGX graphics, video encode and decode) but does have a PCI interface. It probably doesn't have all the various extreme power saving features.

http://download.intel.com/pressroom/...nnel_Creek.pdf

[thop]

Originally Posted by Rys

thop, what would you consider a 'proper' driver here? It was Intel's choice to write their own GMA 500 driver, too.

A driver that works and is maintained, is all. Not even asking to open source it. I'm still sceptic about the GMA 600 driver, even if Linux is their only supported platform.

[Exophase]

Originally Posted by aaronspink

The whole reason it is called ARM is because of the joint development with Apple which caused them to spin out the ARM team from Acorn to allow neutral development. Apple started working on ARM basically before the first version(ARM2/3) shipped and used the second generation (ARM6 and later ARM7) in the newton. This is somewhat known in the tech industry and confirmed from multiple sources including wikipedia

Or the whole reason it's called ARM is because it stood for "Acorn RISC Machine", which has nothing to do with Apple. Yes, Apple started showing interest in ARM in the late 80's as a mobile platform. But ARM development began 4 years before Newton development.

Saying it's well known and on Wikipedia is not actually giving a source. I think you're confused about what Apple's contribution actually was. The Wikipedia node on ARM shows nothing to corroborate your claims - only that Apple started working with Acorn long after ARM was first developed. That's not "helping create the ISA." The ISA was developed by Sophie Wilson, not Apple. The spin-off company ARM Ltd is completely separate from the ISA's development.

[Simon F]

This talk by Steve Furber should shed some light on the history. I think the discussion of ARM starts around the 38 minute mark.

[darkblu]

Originally Posted by Simon F

This talk by Steve Furber should shed some light on the history. I think the discussion of ARM starts around the 38 minute mark.

Thank you, Simon. A jolly good talk altogether. Btw, the ARM part starts from the 32min mark, but not listening to the whole talk would be a loss to any of the participants in this thread.

[Exophase]

Thanks Simon, very interesting watch. I hope this clears up any doubts regarding Apple's involvement - Furber clearly says Apple "came knocking on the door" right after he left in 1990 (around 46:10).

[Simon F]

I liked the bit about the full CPU simulator being only 800 lines of code.

[JohnH]

We've clearly been using the wrong approach, it's better to have no money and no people available :ROFL:

Great trip down memory lane!

John.

[eastmen]

Originally Posted by darkblu

Far from that. Jobs grew tired of trying to spin the negative clock difference with x86. That and IBM screwed up with a bunch of deadlines for the G5 (and Moto had not been particularly stellar with their G4 deliverables either). As you say, well-known things in the industry.



I said 'tablets'. Not hard to tell how they sell (given there's one brand that's actually selling). Also, not hard to tell how netbooks have been affected by the foray of said tablets:


Some say a market's viability is measured by its growth. But i have no knowledge of such things.

Fine. Are game consoles also about the network architecture?


Oh wow. I wouldn't even try to comment on that.

Netbooks are dieing out because of the high prices vs notebooks and the lack of performance. It also doesn't help that there hasn't been many refreshes in over a year. A 1.6ghz atom is going to perform just as shitty as a 1.2ghz atom.

I would think with intel's nxt refresh that should bring dual core atom chips will help.


I mean a dell mini 10 with an atom 1.2ghz cpu , 1 gig of ram and integrated 3 year old intel igp isn't very good as a deal for $300. Paying $400 for the same thing with a 1.6ghz cpu insead isn't great either.

You jump up to $350 right between those , you get the inserpon 11z. It comes with a bigger screen , 2 gigs of ram , a celeron 1.3ghz and a much newer g45 intel igp.


Netbooks just aren't a good value and many see that. The same might be said about the ipad and tablets in general 10 months from now as people learn that they aren't powerfull enough to replace thier laptops.

[darkblu]

Originally Posted by eastmen

Netbooks just aren't a good value and many see that. The same might be said about the ipad and tablets in general 10 months from now as people learn that they aren't powerfull enough to replace thier laptops.

While I agree that netbooks are not particularly good value, I suspect you haven't actually tried an ipad yet. They are freakishly fast for what they do, and quite possibly the best web browsing device on the planet.

ps: flash can go die in a barn fire, for all i care. Adobe had all their chances and blew them, like the little 'oh-look-we-have-the-windows-desktop-by-the-balls-why-bother-about-embedded' snobs that they are were.

[Fox5]

Originally Posted by MfA

I like throughput computing, but ARM is only marginally better suited to it than x86 ... and hell, no one is even using ARM for this whereas x86 at least "has" Larrabee. ARM is actually going away from throughput efficiency with diminishing return speed ups such as superscalar OoO execution and large caches ... once cores get that fat where is the big advantage of ARM?

Creative's ARM based Zii architecture has a thoroughput focus, doesn't it? We'll probably see the first mobile device supporting OpenCL before anything uses Zii, though.

[Exophase]

Originally Posted by Fox5

Creative's ARM based Zii architecture has a thoroughput focus, doesn't it? We'll probably see the first mobile device supporting OpenCL before anything uses Zii, though.

While Zii has an ARM as its general purpose control core (like the PPC on Cell, and it's a very old and slow ARM at that) the big throughput compute array is anything but ARM.

Actually, I say that but I have no idea what it really is, and I think no one else really does either, unless more info has surfaced.

On the other hand, Furber did say (in the video Simon F just posted in this thread, at that) that he has a research project going with some utterly obscene number of ARM9 cores. Again, not comparable to modern ARM, but in some sense an ARM's an ARM. I do wonder if you could gain more with tinier/simpler cores. Furber has said a lot about ARM being super small and simple because they couldn't afford to make it complex, but it really does a lot of things that were quite extravagant for its time, even if much of it was just generalized solutions to things they needed to have on die anyway.

It seems to me that if you want high data throughput going for really wide SIMD makes the most sense, which would be accomplished either by having a bunch of cores with a shared instruction fetch/decode frontend (GPU shaders approach) or really wide vector instructions (Larrabee approach). If you wanted something with really high control throughput, like AI might be, and I think this is what Furber is doing, you might want the opposite extreme - a bunch of extremely small cores with tiny register files and really small/simple instructions (and not a lot of them, with what you have being specialized for the application). ARM as it exists in any incarnation doesn't seem to cater fantastically to either extreme, but I do think it does better than vanilla x86. And no, I don't consider Larrabee vanilla x86, the x86 part is barely more than a casual point of interest.

Main point is, for many-core you probably want something more specialized, but for right now we still need to run our existing general purpose code.