Self-wiring Supercomputer

redcone writes "New Scientist is reporting on an experimental supercomputer made from Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) that can reconfigure itself to tackle different software problems. It is being built by researchers in Scotland. The Edinburgh system will be up to 100 times more energy efficient than a conventional supercomputer of equivalent computing power. The 64-node FPGA machine will also need only as much space as four conventional PCs, while a normal 1 teraflop supercomputer would fill a room. Disclaimer: At this point in time, the software needed to run it, which is the key to the project, is vaporware. "

Not new, but a promising avenue

[AKAImBatman]

FWIW, this is not a new idea. FPGAs (i.e. dynamically reconfigurable processors) have been around for about 20 years now, and have allowed hardware developers to produce custom hardware in many situations. The key, you see, is that hardware designed for a specific task is almost always going to perform that task better than a general purpose processor. That's why the SaarCore [saarcor.de] can outperform a P4, and why your computer has a custom built GPU.

As a result, the idea of runtime-dynamic hardware sounds great. Unfortunately, the issue that developers run into in developing a runtime-dynamic processor is the matter of knowing how to configure the chip. One tack is to allow programs to load chip designs themselves, thus creating specific hardware for that individual program. The down side to this tack is that someone must go through the time consuming task of manually writing the chip in a Hardware Design Language such as VHDL or Verilog. Most programmers aren't going to do this when they can get the program out faster with a general purpose CPU.

This has led to another tack of using software to analyze a program and automatically create a machine to optimize it. This is conceptually similar to the Java JIT method, but is more complex by far. A lot of research is being done into this area (as this story shows), but I wouldn't hold my breath for now.

Another design that makes a lot of sense is the concept of "hardware on demand". i.e. Imagine if you had a library of accelerator chip designs. Whenever a program needs a particular form of common hardware acceleration (e.g. GPU, Sound, DSP, etc.), the onboard FPGAs could be reconfigured to meet the demand. This wouldn't have the same punch as task-specific hardware, but it would provide an inexpensive method for obtaining a bundle of hardware that would otherwise be extremely expensive and use up a lot of bus space.

Re:Not new, but a promising avenue

[Bimo_Dude]

FWIW, this is not a new idea. FPGAs (i.e. dynamically reconfigurable processors) have been around for about 20 years now

You are correct that this is not a new idea; however, I think the original idea [wikipedia.org] for this type of machine was developed in 1936 by Alan Turing [wikipedia.org].

Re:Not new, but a promising avenue

[Intron]

Turing machines are not reconfigurable [wikipedia.org]. They perform according to a fixed instruction set. The precursor to general-purpose, reconfigurable hardware is probably computers with microcoded instruction sets, such as the IBM 360 in 1964.

Re:Not new, but a promising avenue

[suitepotato]

Actually, the original idea was either nature or G-d, whichever you'd rather believe in. Your own brain rewires itself over the course of its lifetime, tearing down and building new connections, the neurons actually physically moving their connections about slowly. So, as soon as we catch up with that ability, we'll have one massive new technique in our AI arsenal.

Come to think of it, isn't the software on our brains vaporware until experience has written it?

Re:Not new, but a promising avenue

[pohl]

...isn't the software on our brains vaporware until experience has written it?

Dude, that's poetry.

Re:Not new, but a promising avenue

[spitefulcrow]

Now I just need mod points and a +1 Poetic option.

Self-wiring neural networks using FPGAs

[ikewillis]

Building a supercomputer that runs vaporware seems like a rather foolhardy exercise indeed.

GenoByte [genobyte.com] has found a more novel use for FPGAs, which they call "evolvable hardware." Much like our own brains neural networks on the FPGAs reconfigure the way they interconnect on the fly; commonly used paths are reenforced while less frequently used ones atrophy.

Here are some cool pictures:

The CAM-BRAIN machine, a big box full of FPGA boards: http://www.genobyte.com/images/machine.jpg [genobyte.com]

Neural network layout for the XC6216 FPGA: http://www.genobyte.com/images/chip.JPG [genobyte.com]

All in all this approach is substantially faster than modelling large neural networks on a general purpose processor. In the GenoByte approach, the neural network is implemented as physical circuits.

Re:Not new, but a promising avenue

[Jeff DeMaagd]

How does this vapor supercomputing box compare to real hardware, such as a Blue Gene node, which is a big pile of interconnected custom PPC chips, all in a box already the size of a 30" TV?

Re:Not new, AND being done

[fygment]

First heard about reconfigurable computing here on /. The company Starbridge [starbridgesystems.com] is still going strong and long past the vaporware stage.

Re:Not new, but a promising avenue

[darkain]

considering where consumers generally demand performance the most is in games, i can see this as being very helpful. i was just randomly thinking about it after looking at several images on the site you linked at, and then it hit me... if you combine the ray tracing core with a FPGA-like pixel shader, you could get some highly complex scenes with potentially much less overhead and speed requirements... thus making the chips cooler and smaller.

and on a personal note, i would love to see that mixed with aug

Re:Physics processing unit?

[Dashing Leech]

"I've often wondered if it would be feasible to have a PPU (Physics Processing Unit) to improve the physics of game worlds?"

Yes. [pcper.com]

Re:Physics processing unit?

[mangu]

PPU would gobble this up, set up Lagrangian equations (generalized coordinates provide rather a systematic way to set up any classical mechanics problem), crank out the results and update the game world coordinates. This way every object could really be blown to pieces, shot/thrown through objects or deformed.

An interesting idea, it that can be done with current CPUs for lumped elements, but not for continuous media. Algorithms for physics simulations like what you describe have been developed for over 50

Re:Physics processing unit?

[AKAImBatman]

Most of the game developers I know cheat by using an ODE library. e.g.:

ODE.org [ode.org]
ODEJava.org [odejava.org] (Java bindings for ODE)

Re:Physics processing unit?

[mangu]

Most of the game developers I know cheat by using an ODE library

but if you read the documentation [ode.org], you'll find the following:

"ODE emphasizes speed and stability over physical accuracy"

Which means that ODE, the "Open Dymanics Engine", isn't really very good at solving ODEs, the ordinary differential equations.

Re: Not new, but a promising avenue

[Andy_R]

For mainstream use, you need an easy way to program it for general-purpose computing. The real problem here is software

One nice way to use FPGAs is by using the compiler to do the optimisation. Write your software for a large general purpose CPU that could fit in the FPGA, then throw out all the bits of the processor that never get used by your program, and concentrate on the parts you do use.

At it's bluntest, this leads to simple optimisations like dropping the FPU if there's no floating point, or only

OK, everybody.

[Scoria]

From this point forward, no Terminator references will be permitted. ;-)

Re:OK, everybody.

[Strange Ranger]

From this point forward, no Terminator references will be permitted. ;-)

Ok but... I'll be back.

Re:OK, everybody.

[Spy der Mann]

From this point forward, no Terminator references will be permitted. ;-)

No problemo. B-)

For some REAL self-wiring...

[crimson30]

What about the computer from Superman III [fast-rewind.com]?

Being Built

[NETHED]

Well, if its being built, then they MUST have some sort of plan. Its not like we're in the tech bubble again.

some resources

[professorhojo]

the wikipedia article on FPGA: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FPGA [wikipedia.org]

great list of resources from WP on FPGA if anyone's interested in reading more:

• comp.arch.fpga [google.com] Google archive of Usenet groups, where people interested in FPGA hang out.
• Opencores [opencores.org] A set of free IP cores that can be implemented in FPGAs
• Comprehensive tutorial on FPGA [tutorial-reports.com]
• A comprehensive list of FPGA CPUs [fpgacpu.org]
• A good FPGA tools overview [rtcmagazine.com]
• FPGAworld news, jobs, forums, demos etc. [fpgaworld.com](http://www.fpgaworld.com)
• FPGA Basics by Ray Andraka [andraka.com]
• Fpga4Fun various fpga projects [fpga4fun.com]
• FPGA Boards [fpga-faq.com]
• AP100 PCI Platform FPGA Development Board [amirix.com]
• Information about signal processing on FPGA by RF Engines [rfel.com]
• FPGA manufacturers
  • Xilinx [xilinx.com] Xilinx has traditionally been the FPGA leader. Their general philosophy is to provide all the features possible, at the cost of extra complexity.
  • Altera [altera.com] Altera is the second FPGA heavyweight. Their philosophy is to provide the features that most people want while keeping their devices easy to use.
  • Lattice [latticesemi.com] Lattice's focus is on low-cost, feature-optimized FPGAs and non-volatile, flash-based FPGAs.
  • Actel [actel.com] (http://www.actel.com/) and QuickLogic [quicklogic.com] have antifuse (programmable-only-once) products.
  • Cypress [cypress.com]
  • Atmel [atmel.com]
  • Debian FPGA [debian.net].

Re:some resources

[caluml]

Holy shit! Check out this guys posting history [slashdot.org]. That's some good posting. I'll give you 10/1 that he'll blow it all in a GNNA trolling session.. :)

Re:some resources

[DoubleD]

Small correction:

Actel also offers Flash based FPGAs (ProASIC+ and ProASIC3) that are reprogrammable.

Eventually.....

[DoraLives]

these things will be a sort of pinkish grey with a funny convoluted surface appearance, weigh a few pounds, and float in tanks of clear liquid.

Re:Eventually.....

[Dr. Weird]

And as a result give consistently unreliable, biased answers for even the simplest of numeric tasks. I love progress.

Re:Eventually.....

[Drakonian]

I think the vast majority of comments are are missing the mark. There seems to be a lack of knowledge about FPGAs. It's not self-aware, and doesn't really configure itself per se. FPGAs are just easily-customizable hardware instead of spending $300k on an ASIC. You "program" the hardware with a Hardware Description Language like VHDL or Verilog. So if you can have custom processing blocks of HDL and dynamically load them onto the FPGAs, I guess it's like "wiring itself". But conceptually it isn't a lot more

They must be waiting for...

[Anonymous Coward]

Longhorn to be released.

Awake me when it becomes self-aware

[Anonymous Coward]

And just before it starts sending people to the past

Mmmmmmm...

[10000000000000000000]

field programmable gatorade...

Nup

[Mattygfunk1]

... is vaporware.

It's not vaporware until it doesn't arrive ;)

__
Laugh Daily funny free videos [laughdaily.com]

Lisp

[ari_j]

It's only vaporware because they haven't written a Common Lisp for the machine yet. After all, the perfect programming language to target a self-reconfiguring machine is one that can reconfigure itself to keep up with the machine.

Hey, dems fightin' woids.

[crovira]

I think Smalltalk is a veritable chameleon compared to Lisp. Its the class libraries doan'chyano.

I like Lisp [first program I wrote in Lisp was code that accepted an EBNF syntax and generated a Lisp parser] but not that much.

already on the market

[mjsottile77]

The Cray XD-1 (http://www.cray.com/products/xd1/index.html [cray.com]) has already been on the market with FPGA 'application accelerators'. This isn't really new news.

Besides, FPGAs have two issues that make them good only for a very specific set of apps. Number 1, they don't currently have great floating point performance - this is a killer for most scientific apps. Number 2, they are hard to feed because the rate they can compute at versus the rate memory can feed them is quite skewed. Regardless, they're still very promising. The reconfigurable computing team at LANL (http://rcc.lanl.gov/ [lanl.gov]) has done some very cool things with FPGA based systems.

Re:already on the market

[AKAImBatman]

Number 1, they don't currently have great floating point performance - this is a killer for most scientific apps.

Eh? An FPGA is a blank slate. You can code an FPU into it. Are you referring to the underlying hardware performance being slow for FP calculations?

Number 2, they are hard to feed because the rate they can compute at versus the rate memory can feed them is quite skewed.

This is true of all computers except for custom designed supercomputers. Most general purpose CPUs sit and do nothing for a

Re:already on the market

[twiddlingbits]

Actually, you have to pick an FPGA "core" that supports an FPU. They are available, but the basic FPGA only supports fixed point math in most cases. And in many cases that is perfectly acceptable. Pipelined CPUs we developed to avoid the wait states for memory so that work can go on while waiting on Memory. Have a on-chip memory contoller which allows being able to access multiple memory locations at the same time also helps with this problem as well as using Dual-Port memory which can be read from/written

Re:already on the market

[Kiryat Malachi]

The basic FPGA only supports gate-level operations. When you pick a "core", you're talking about picking an ALU implementation, which really has nothing to do with the on-chip hardware. Some cores implement fixed-point (generally the simpler ones). Some cores implement float. But an FPGA in and of itself implements truth-table operations and block interconnects; it's way below the level of math operations.

(embedded systems designer in a current life, including doing FPGA and ASIC design)

Re:already on the market

[Kiryat Malachi]

That's a seperate piece of hardware from the base FPGA.

And yes, they are. Since many signal processing apps can be handled quite well in fixed point, those FPGAs aren't half bad. We often just prototype algorithms on DSP and then do the ASIC without bothering with the FPGA intermediary step, but it's nice to have the option.

Re:already on the market

[AKAImBatman]

Actually, you have to pick an FPGA "core" that supports an FPU. They are available, but the basic FPGA only supports fixed point math in most cases.

Ugh. My poor head is reeling at this confusing statement. Are you trying to say that you need to choose a proper software core with an FPU (I agree) or that FPGAs naturally have a given set of math functions? The former is true, the latter is not. Your FPGA is only as good as the processor core you load into it. If you load a multi-pipelined, FPU capable behem

Re:already on the market

[Troy Baer]

Considering how much a Cray costs, I'd think they could splurge for a few Virtexes to load an FPU on.

Well, the XD-1 isn't your normal Cray machine; it's the product of a Canadian company called Octiga Bay that Cray bought last year. The XD-1 is basically a blade-based Opteron cluster with a custom InfiniBand interface (renamed "Rapid Array" for inexplicable marketing reasons) and the capability to add a couple FPGAs per blade. It is not a mainframe with vector processors and huge amounts of memory b

Re:already on the market

[Kirkoff]

It is not a mainframe with vector processors and huge amounts of memory bandwidth, which is what most people think of in relation to Cray.

What about fish?

Re:already on the market

[Spluge]

The FPU will be as good as you design it to be.
In comparison to custom built hardware an FPGA sucks, it's big, slow and power hungry. If you were to take a standard FPU and build it into an FPGA it would be useless.
But the whole point is that you don't need a general use FPU that can do everything. You only have one that can do the one specific operation that you need. e.g. If you need to add three 158 bit floating point numbers you have a bit of logic that can do that. It's 158 bits wide, has 3 inputs and

Teraflop computer fills a room?

[TinheadNed]

How does the playstation 3 manage 2.2 teraflops without being the size of a house then?

Re:Teraflop computer fills a room?

[BurntNickel]

How does the playstation 3 manage 2.2 teraflops without being the size of a house then?

Marketing.

Re:Teraflop computer fills a room?

[Anonymous Luddite]

>> Marketing.

Soooooo much cheaper than R&D - who can blame them?

Re:Teraflop computer fills a room?

[csteinle]

Not at the salaries my marketing collegues are on.

Precision

[Junta]

Game consoles and video cards are measured by their single-precision floating-point performance (32-bit).

HPC generally requires more precision, and as such the standard for performance measure is double precision (64-bit).

Re:Teraflop computer fills a room?

[cyngus]

Because it is only going to achieve this kind of performance for specific circumstances. Specifically when the 8 non-general cores (in marketing Synergistic Processing Elements) can be chained together such that the output of one is the input of another. For something like graphics rendering this makes a lot of sense, since you want to apply a series of effects to a scene. Each core is setup to do one effect and you end up with this really high performance processing stream that's all flowing through fas

Skywhatnow

[FidelCatsro]

This sounds like Skynet , a self wiring supercomputer that will go on to dominate the world ..
Please everyone go to the place and dump the thing in some molten metal before its too late... We dont want another awfull Terminator sequal

Vaporware?

[Sensible Clod]

Don't worry, just let the machine write its own software.

Obligatory...

[amstrad]

Has it already wired itself to imagine a Beowulf cluster of itself?

Sounds like my current project

[booyah]

I have this killer project going, its all opensource.

its called Duck Nuckem Tournement 2012. its multiplayer, will run on the phantom console, and is all opensource.

ofcourse the project itself is vaporware as of the time of this writing....

hypercomputer

[AeiwiMaster]

"No one has ever tried to build a big supercomputer with these chips before," Parsons says.
That is wrong star bridge systems
http://www.starbridgesystems.com/ [starbridgesystems.com]
have been selling the hypercomputer for some years now.

Re:hypercomputer

[Colin Smith]

"No one has ever tried to build a big supercomputer with these chips before,"

HTH

Turing and so forth

[Jesus 2.0]

It's been a while since I learned about this stuff, but hasn't it been mathematically proven that it's futile to try to write a program that, presented with an arbitrary (expressable) problem, will write a program to solve that problem?

Re:Turing and so forth

[Dr. Weird]

Who said this is an arbitrary problem? It is a very specific one: converting code in some high-level language into hardware wiring.

You're argument would apply equally well (or equally poorly) to compiling code: "since solving the arbitrary problem is futile, we can't convert a high-level set of instructions into machine code" but as before the problem is not arbitrary. The language --> hardware problem is more difficult than the language --> machine instructions, but not unsurmountably and ther

Sort of...

[fireboy1919]

What has been proven is that there are problems for which it is impossible to automatically write a program to solve. Further, this is an NP-hard problem, meaning that you can't even know for sure if you're ever going to get a solution, or how long it will take.

However you can usually make a good estimate with approximate solutions of how close you are to the real solution, and how much longer it will take. Obviously this only works with programs that have some form of error evaluation criteria. This

Re:Sort of...

[poopdeville]

What has been proven is that there are problems for which it is impossible to automatically write a program to solve. Further, this is an NP-hard problem, meaning that you can't even know for sure if you're ever going to get a solution, or how long it will take.

What on earth are you talking about? You seem to be confusing the notions of recursive decidability, recursive enumerability, and NP-hard problems. I'll sort it out for you:

A set of numbers is recursively enumerable if there is a recursive fu

Re:Yeah, Gödel should have used C#

[maxwell demon]

No, Goedel was the one who could not make a decision without contradicting himself (very bad when you're at court). The one who couldn't tell if he will ever be finished was Turing. Probably his problem was that he was too busy trying to find out if the people around him actually were transvestites.

Some bits of information

[anzha]

Once the 64-node machine is built, the designers will try to transfer several existing supercomputer programs onto the new hardware using these tools. "If we can get these [programs] to work, we'll know that we have a general purpose solution," Parsons says.

[Emphasis added]

So, this is still vapourware.

LARC [nasa.gov], at NASA, built an FPGA supercomputer. Here's a link [nasa.gov] to a related paper from 2002. Note, its a PDF.

Additionally, Cray builds an FPGA using supecomputer in its XD-1 [cray.com]. It's definitely a nonvapourware project since they've sold over 15 of them. Yes, yes, it also uses Opterons, but they're paired with FPGAs.

Additionally, prior to Seymour Cray's death at the hands of a drunk driver, he was looking into FPGAs as his next stab at supercomputing.

Brilliant strategy!

[Pollux]

Here's an idea...I think I'll go into the car manufacturing business. I'll build myself a brand new car with an extremely efficient engine that gets 400 miles to the gallon. It's a small engine and a lightweight car, but can still transport a family of four!

Disclaimer: At this point in time, the software needed to run it, which is the key to the project, is vaporware. "

Except there's one little problem...the gas needed to run it, which is the key to making this engine so efficient, hasn't been invented yet. But as soon as it is, we'll take the market by storm!

Yes, except

[Colin Smith]

It's a research project for Edinburgh University, not a commercial enterprise.

Me first with the dumb joke!

[Fantastic Lad]

Will it be able to self-repair and come after Captain Blaze and Johnny Lunchpail and the rest of the Good Crew of the S.S. Intrepid with renewed and terrifying mechanical fervor?

Why, Oh why do we build these mad inventions? When will we ever learn the folly of mocking Mother Nature?

-FL

Existing products: Starbridge Systems

[Knightman]

There's a company that has been selling this type of system for a couple of years.

They also have their own language called Viva to be able to program the computer.

Link: http://www.starbridgesystems.com/ [starbridgesystems.com]

Can't refuse...

[genkael]

Could you imagine a Beowolf cluster of ... ah nevermind...

Stretch

[Kontinuum]

As already mentioned, the biggest problem with FPGAs is the difficulty/time in writing the logic. While that's not necessarily a big problem for a major supercomputing center or a CS research center, it (along with cost) is a problem that prevents FPGAs from being routinely adopted by end-users such as people in the applied research community.

One idea to get around this has been advanced by (among others), Stretch, Inc. [stretchinc.com]. The summary is that their compiler analyze your C-code and decide what can be mor

Coincidence???

[Nom du Keyboard]

Here's my Slashdot fortune cookie for today as I was reading this article:

The meta-Turing test counts a thing as intelligent if it seeks to devise and apply Turing tests to objects of its own creation. -- Lew Mammel, Jr.

Coincidence?

1 Teraflop supercomputer?

[neomage86]

I'm confused ... I thought the Xbox360 had 1 teraflop, and the ps3 had 2 teraflops of computing power. Now it says a teraflop machine takes a room? From the pictures it seems like the xbox and ps3 are both well under 1 ft^3. Floating point operations/sec isn't like MHz. Higher always means better ... if it can do more operations/sec that by definition means it is faster.

Re:1 Teraflop supercomputer?

[Shadow Wrought]

Now it says a teraflop machine takes a room? From the pictures it seems like the xbox and ps3 are both well under 1 ft^3.

It might turn out that Sony and Microsoft's numbers were more marketing than machine. Remember, its not a lie if you think its true. That's why marketing droids are programmed to be callous, aggressive, and gullible.

MD - Marketing Droid
HE - Hardware Engineer

MD: So how many Terrafowls will it do?
HE: Terra-whats?
MD: You know, how many libraries of congess can it process?
HE: Tw

Re:1 Teraflop supercomputer?

[Junta]

Game consoles, video chip makers mean something different when they talk flops than HPC community.

Game consoles and video chips operate primarily in single precision (32 bit) mode, hence the high numbers.

HPC generally requires double precision (64-bit) and that is the number used when discussing systems with that application in mind.

Re:1 Teraflop supercomputer?

[AvantLegion]

The majority of the "FLOPS" in the "computing power" numbers for the PS3 and Xbox 360 are GPU shader operations, not general-purpose CPU floating point operations.

The CPUs of each system are both approximately 0.2 TFLOPS.

What about Star Bridge

[Pedrito]

Slashdot ran previous [slashdot.org] articles [slashdot.org] on StarBridge Systems [starbridgesystems.com] and their Hypercomputers that are built on massive parallel FPGA processors. And their operating system/Programming Environment, Viva [starbridgesystems.com] is not vaporware. I can't find a reference to it, but I'm fairly certain the French department of energy already purchased one for researching nuclear blast yields.

Despite the initial handwaving about having these on our desktops, I think it's going to be a while before that happens. Still, it's a very cool idea.

Sourceforge!

[caluml]

At this point in time, the software needed to run it, which is the key to the project, is vaporware. "

They should start a SourceForge project - we'll all chip in, and send patches and code, won't we campers? Here's my contribution:

#include <stdio.h>

Who's next?

Re:Sourceforge!

[wpmegee]

#include

Re:Sourceforge!

[wpmegee]

Dammit.

#include <stdio.h>

Re:Sourceforge!

[maxwell demon]

Here's my contribution:

dwim();

;-)

You bastard

[Chris Burke]

Here's my contribution:

#include <stdio.h>

You stole my code, you bastard! You'll be hearing from my lawyers.

Scotland vs UK

[caluml]

FTFA: The system under construction at the Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre - part of Edinburgh University, UK - will use Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) chips instead of conventional microprocessors.

Has any one noticed that when Scotland do well, we say that they are from the UK/GB. But if they did something bad, it would be "Edinburgh University, Scotland". e.g.:
Coulthard is winning! This British driver is .....
Coulthard has come last, and what a shame it is for this Scottish driver...

The trick to this is in the context

[guitaristx]

Consider how much computing resources (for multiprogramming systems) are spent now in context switching. How much more of that would be spent not only dumping and reloading the contents of the registers, like in current systems, but the instruction set architecture (ISA)?

Unless there's some way to dynamically optimize and/or compromise between different running processes (which would inevitably include the OS kernel), this technology has a great potential to be much slower than the usual set-up (this may

FPGA's Do Have Some Sweet Advantages

[MyCrowSoft]

Although using FPGAs for reconfigurable computing applications still has a number of drawbacks, utilizing FPGAs for embedded applications is some really cool stuff.

For example, an entire system can be dynamically built right into the FPGA -- including processor, OPB, memory buses, and any other devices such as interrupt controllers, timers, etc. Aside from RAM and Flash, you almost have an entire embedded system built right into a chip.

Earlier this spring I had the opportunity to work on a project that re

nobody

[cahiha]

"No one has ever tried to build a big supercomputer with these chips before," Parsons says.

Like a serious flu season, this sort of thing happens again every few years, when a new generation of grad students and faculty think it's a really neat idea. The thing is, when all is said and done, these things probably still are not cost effective right now. Sufficiently powerful FPGAs are expensive, and custom hardware is expensive. Furthermore, they are a pain to program, and even if they work perfectly they

Hype'Computing

[Doc Ruby]

Powerful (by the numbers) hardware, but no software, is the hallmark of general purpose FPGA computing. It was exactly the same story 15 years ago, when I wrote the host/client apps for an embedded FPGA/DSP image coprocessor in Silicon Valley. Still no one has changed the story. The reason is that FPGA is inherently parallel, but all complex application development is procedural. The underlying gates are programmed in Verilog, VHDL, or another hardware state language, which doesn't map well to the procedura

Re:Hype'Computing

[Doc Ruby]

Or I'm somewhere between your age guesses, and have watched both dataflow and FPGA/DSP slowly develop. Where do you get "bitter" and "irritated" from my hopeful post? UML won't get widely adopted until it can generate even prototype code, but then it (or something like it, who cares?) will become popular. And, as I pointed out, almost the only way to program these parallel devices.

Queueing theory is about equally useful, in theoiry, but - where's the software? That's what we're talking about. There's all k

Hi mum, we're on slashdot :)

[AndyGasman]

Ah, the fame and fortune...

As a software design engineer at Nallatech, I'm pretty chuffed we came up on Slashdot.
Not wanting to come across as a pedant...

"software needed to run it, which is the key to the project, is vapourware"
This is not the case, with Nallatech's software is capable of providing the intercommunication (DIMEtalk [nallatech.com]), the low level control (FUSE [nallatech.com]) and the Algorithm implementation (double [nallatech.com] and single [nallatech.com] precision floating point cores, as well as a new tool, currently in beta, to simplify their use by developers).

"Nallatech, a company that makes software tools for FPGA programmers".
This is true, however we do equal amount of hardware and firmware development.

More info:
Read our white paper [nallatech.com] about supercomputing for the oil and gas industry, reg required I'm afraid?
The foot print of this thing could be tiny, as you can get 9 Virtex 2 pro FPGAs (Using BenBLUE-3 [nallatech.com] modules) on a BenERA [nallatech.com] Carrier card, and you can get 4 BenERAs into a cPCI rack, so to get 64 FPGAs you just need 2 standard cPCI racks. Since you can get 4 cPCI racks into you standard 19" server rack, which would kick out a massive 2 Teraflops.

Though, I can't help but think Cell processors might kick our asses, at least a little bit anyway. Sorry about all the links to Nallatech, just pointing folk to the info. Oh, by the way, I think the 1 Teraflop for 64 FPGAs is a very conservative estimate.

positronic brain?

[infonography]

Is is about time we started working on the Positronic Brain? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positronic_brain

T oo bad Asimov was sooo wrong about them with regard to the so-called three laws. http://www.asimovonline.com/asimov_FAQ.html

I wonder if you could buy insurance for "rapid positronic cascade failure"

Blue Gene is abuot 2.4 Tflops / rack

[a3217055]

Blue Gene is about 2.4 TFlops/ rack ( give or take half a terraflop ) . So room is a small kitchen closet then you have 5 Tflops in there. Most super computers are over engineered to be dynamically configurable, because they are so expensive but then you can add maybe 10% more cost of investment to have something that is even more dynamic. But nowadays you can have a bedroom ( 20ftX20ft ) filled with a rack of bluegenes getting you about 36 Tflops +. Now with newer supercomputers with dual cores and QDR, a

The end is nigh!

[xenocide2]

It can only be a matter of time [kuro5hin.org] now. Although, in all likely hood, it will wind up spending most of its time optimizing Gentoo settings.

Already got something better

[eagl]

I've already got a piece of hardware that consumes a lot less power and can be reconfigured to solve ANY provably solvable problem. It also unfortunately relies on software "under development".

It's called a PENCIL.

Next week, I plan on holding a press conference when I announce my future-proof technology update, called PAPER. Existing PENCIL software will be fully compatible with PAPER, however document transfer from the previously used TABLETOP and CLAY-TABLET will require third-party software known as

Obligatory

[PMuse]

"But can you do it?" cried Loonquawl. . . .

"No, . . . But I'll tell you who can," said Deep Thought.

"I speak of none other than the computer that is to come after me," intoned Deep Thought, his voice regaining its accustomed declamatory tones. "A computer whose merest operational parameters I am not worthy to calculate - and yet I will design it for you. . . . And I shall name it also unto you. And it shall be called ... The Earth."

singularity

[igotmybfg]

here we come!

Von Neuman Bottleneck

[ka9dgx]

We're all suffering from the Von Neuman bottle-neck. We've all had pipe-dreams of a new, much more efficient way of doing things. I had mine back in 1981-1982, and I call it the BitGrid [blogspot.com], your name and specifics may vary, but it's probably also non Von Neuman.

If you can express the algorithms you need in a non-serial form, and get them to operate in a data-flow or other architecture which can operate on all of the data at the same time, you can really kick up your compute performance.

Of course, as long as

Re:Important Question!

[vmcto]

But will is be able to run Duke Nukem Forever?

No. But a spelling / grammar checker might be doable.

Re:Important Question!

[VernonNemitz]

Actually, the REALL Important Question is this:

How easily can that system be modified to emulate any other system? That is, if I have an original copy of the original SpaceWar game, then I need the same kind of computer it ran on, to play it. So, I think it would be REALLY GREAT to be able to have a system that IN HARDWARE can emulate anything from a n old Timex/Sinclair to a Cray.

Of course

[ftzdomino]

Duke Nukem Forever will only run on vaporware.

Re:Of course

[maxwell demon]

Duke Nukem Forever will only run on vaporware.

According to the summary, the software of the computer currently is vaporware. Therefore DNF should run just fine on it.

Re:not really ..

[TEMM]

I dont know what kind of design you are referring to but synthesizing and doing routing and placement of a circut takes much longer than 10 minutes for largers system. We have a project in our research lab that takes somewhere around 3 hours to compile from start to finish. That being said, it does not mean that you have to recompile everything when you want to reconfigure a chip. Each chip can have a base set of logic, and have sectors where abstract "modules" can simply be "dropped in". While this can ca

Re:not really ..

[masklinn]

It should also be noted that specific simulations and calculus can take much more than 3 hours. If you need 3 hours to reconfigure your computer but the calculation is 50% faster than on a general purpose supercomputer, you may still save days.

Not only that, but you won't recompile every time you launch a simulation, since you'll change the datas but not the algorithms themselves when the simulation code is finalized.

Buffer overflows

[antispam_ben]

i wonder how buffer overflows will be handeled

If it runs Microsoft software, they won't be.

Re:False Information

[Junta]

Where on that page does that say 147 teraflops?

Around #298 on the top500 list is on the order of a teraflop (a little more and looks like a 256-computer cluster (2-way). That would be a few racks and could be considered small-room sized.

Incidently, #1 on the list acheived ~70 teraflops, so 147 teraflops in 0.9mx1.5m is highly unlikely.

Keep in mind, when throwing around flops when talking HPC, you almost always talk about double-precision (64-bit) and all these game console makers and the like use single

Re:cost of FPGA?

[AKAImBatman]

Avnet publishes *some* prices. Note that large runs are quite a bit less expensive. IIRC, Xilnix claims something like $5 per Spartan chip for runs of more than 250,000. I forget what their claims are for their large Vertex chip runs.

Spartan 3 pricing [avnet.com]
Virtex 4 pricing [avnet.com]

Re:DOH

[wed128]

HAL was not evil...just misguided, that's all.