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Stretch Announces Chip That Rewires Itself On The Fly

Posted by simoniker on from the self-reconfiguring-articles-next dept.

tigre writes "CNET News reports on a chip startup call Stretch which produces the S5000, a RISC processor with electronically programmable hardware so that it can add to its instruction set as it deems necessary. Thus it can re-configure itself to behave like a DSP, or a (digital) ASIC, and perform the equivalent of hundreds of instructions in one cycle. Great way to bridge the gap between general-purpose computing and ASICs."

7 of 311 comments (clear)

  1. virus hitting the hardware by KDN · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Can you imagine the virus you could write if you could change the instruction set of the cpu?

    1. Re:virus hitting the hardware by Short+Circuit · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Interesting point.

      People developing along similar lines must have means of controlling the new circuitry so that hot spots don't form on the die. Especially if they provide analog capability. It could be too easy to set up a feedback that could really trash that part of the die.

      Which brings up another thought: Do they have an on-board controller that tracks what parts of the die are usable and what aren't? If they do, they can have seriously high production yields.

      In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if such a self-diagnostic utility made its way into modular dies with specialized circuitry. So a processor could run on two AMUs instead of three, and so forth.

      --
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  2. New application-speed records to be set... by LostCluster · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If this doesn't rempresent the death of the megahertz as a processor-benchmark standard, I don't know what will...

    Effective application speed was never based on a cycle count alone, because different processors can have better instruction sets for the given application. The main breakthrough here is that this chip leaves "user-definable" space in its instruction set so they can re-optimize the instruction set on the fly. Whatever you're running, its most commonly used functions can almost slide from being code to being "on the chip" and that's sure to speed up the experienced speed.

    Yeah, I know its a /. cliche, but... imagine a cluster of these!

  3. yawn ... by torpor · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ... wake me up when i can buy a thousand of them for $10 a piece ...

    [okay, okay, so it'll be -hell- fun to design codecs and other protocols that can switch their chipset dynamically, yeah, but i'd need 1000's of them deployed to have a real reason to do it...]

    --
    ; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
  4. This is a setback for crypto-land... by LostCluster · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I think we're going to have to move the crypto benchmarks back a step when this tech comes out. Not very many of us have RISC chips that are optimized for MD5 or any of the other popular crypto formulas, but if the typical consumer PC had this technology, we could all effectively have an on-demand RISC for whatever we need at the moment sitting in our PCs.

    In short, the time-to-crack using consumer technologies for almost any form of crypto is about to take a step backwards. It won't "break" anything, but the brute force combinations will be able to be examined in a faster time, meaning higher standards will be needed for the same level of protection you have today.

    Not surprising, these breakthroughs will always keep coming...

  5. How is it possible? by dhasenan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How can something that normally takes "hundreds of thousands of instructions" be handled in a single instruction? Surely all the same mathematical operations must take place, except for some optimization. Or is it a matter of a certain structure for computation being created in a more permanent fashion rather than being dynamically formed upon demand? Then the operations could be performed in a single cycle. On the other hand, that portion of the processor would become useless to other tasks. Or am I misunderstanding this entirely?

  6. Sounds good on paper, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...I sense another Transmeta coming on...

    Yes sure, rewirable chips would be cool for certain applications, but how does one go about making it deal with multiple applications with multiple needs? You'd over load the CPU with a truckload of specialized instructions - which would probably slow it down. Granted, I see uses in things like mobile phones, but for multitasking machines, a 'Jack of all trades' chip is the way to go.