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AMD Fusion To Add To x86 ISA
Giants2.0 writes "Ars Technica has a brief article detailing some of the prospects of AMD's attempt to fuse the CPU and GPU, including the fact that AMD's Fusion will modify the x86 ISA. From the article, 'To support CPU/GPU integration at either level of complexity (i.e. the modular core level or something deeper), AMD has already stated that they'll need to add a graphics-specific extension to the x86 ISA. Indeed, a future GPU-oriented ISA extension may form part of the reason for the company's recently announced "close to metal"TM (CTM) initiative.'"
Am I the only that thinks this is a bad idea? Either I change video cards more often than CPU's or CPU's more than graphics cards, but in either case I seldom want to upgrade both at the same time. Although I suppose I wouldn't mind a better GPU "for free" with my CPU, I suspect it won't be "for free".
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ISA is definitely the future to interface a CPU and a GPU, but I keep hearing about this VLB technology that's even hotter!
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'To support CPU/GPU integration at either level of complexity (i.e. the modular core level or something deeper), AMD has already stated that they'll need to add a graphics-specific extension to the x86 ISA.
x86 is a great multi-purpose, but the reason we're seeing greater and greater offload onto a GPU is because that's great at a specific task. So my question is, how long until we see widespread PPU (Physics processing unit) usage, and beyond that, a Physics extension to the x86 ISA? Or will we all just be computing on the grid at that point?
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Can it run Linux? OK JUST KIDDING!
Why joke? It is an important question.
All the current nvidia and ati graphics cards require proprietary, closed-source drivers.
If the GPU is to be integrated into the CPU, either they will have to keep the new ISA a secret or we will finally start getting access to the information required to really write Free graphics drivers.
A lot of people seem to be having issues working out why AMD is doing this
people are forgetting that they are not always the target market for computers (this isnt aimed at you if you upgrade one more than the other)
for example, what is easyer for your computer illiterate father to do, change one slot component, or install a graphics card , and a cpu.
it also allows for even smaller form computers
i will concede, that these gains are pretty small though, i cant see it being worth it
I guess I'm showing my age. As soon as I saw "ISA" I immediately thought, "Why the HELL are they thinking about bringing this back?
:(
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What happened to the RISC philosophy? Keep the hardware simple and let the compiler do the work.
No, lets create 1000 more instructions for graphics, 1000 for physics and 1000 more just for the heck of it.
ISA = Instruction Set Architecture
As described by Ars Technica, the new NVIDIA G80 generation of GPUs are actually collections of general stream processors, a type of FPU. The GPU functionality is then programmed in software. The article from Ars Technica points out that "These threads could do anything from graphics and physics calculations to medical imaging or data visualization.". I assume the ATI GPU is moving in the same direction.
So what AMD is adding to x86-64 is probably not just a GPU, but a new powerful general purpose massively parallel FPU.
Now with 5 cores ! (and a seperate core for those tricky areas)
I've been following GPGPU stuff for awhile now, casually at first but much more closely now with the AMD/ATI merger and the release of nVidea's G80 architecture. Both of these represent the first big steps toward GPGPU technology (buzzword: stream computing) becoming reality.
The initial approach I suspect from the Fusion effort will basically be an R600-based, entry-level GPU tacked onto the CPU die. I'd imagine that this would have 4-8 quads (GPU 4-wide SIMD functional unit) as standard. This would mostly be targetted at the IGP market for laptops and small and/or cheap desktops. Its likely that CTM will enable this additional horsepower to be used for general clculations, but its primary purpose will be to replace other IGP solutions.
A little further out I see the new functional units being woven into the fabric of the CPU itself. This model likens closely to having many 128-bit-wide extended SSE units, likely to have automatic scheduling of SIMD tasks (eg - tell the CPU to multiply 2 large float arrays and the CPU balances the workload across the functional units automatically.) A software driver will be able to utilize these units as a GPU, but the focus is now much more on computation. It functions as a GPU for low-end users, and suppliments high-end users and gamers with discreete video cards by taking on additional calculations such as physics. Physics will benefit being on the system bus (even though PCIe x16 is relatively fast) because the latancy will be lower, and because the structures typically used to perform physics calculations reside in system memory.
Even further out I see computers very much becoming small grid computers unto themselves, though software will take a long time to catch up to what the hardware will be capable of. I see nVidea's CUDA initiative as the first step in this direction - Provide a "sea of processors" view to the machine and allow tight integration into standard code withought placing the burden of balancing the workload onto the programmer (which nVidea's CUDA C compiler attempts to do.) nVidea's G80 architecture goes one further by migrating away from the vector-based architecture in favor of a scalar one - rather than 32 4-wide vector ALUs, they provide 128 scalar ALUs. Threading takes care of translating those n-wide calls into n seperate scalar calls. Most scientific code does not lend itself well to the vector model, though over the years it has been shoe-horned into vector-centric algorithms because it was neccesary to get addequate performance. Even graphics shaders are becoming less and less vector-centric, as nVidea research shows, because many effects (or portions there-of) are better suited to scalar code.
Eventually, I think this model will grow such that the CPU will be replaced by, to coin a phrase, something called a CCU (Central Coordination Unit) who's only real responibility is to route instructions to the correct execution units. Execution units will vary by type and number from system to system depending on what chips/boards you've plugged into your CCU expansion bus. The CCU will accept both scalar and broad-stroke (vector) instructions such as "multiply the elements of this array by that array and store the results in this other array" which will be broken down into individual elements and assigned to available execution units.
All of this IMHO of course.
It used to be that CPUs didn't come with floating point units. You had to buy a 287 or 387 to go with your 286 or 386, and they weren't cheap either. I think we paid $400 for a 20 MHz 387 back in the early 90s. Around the end of the 386s' use in desktops, competitors to Intel (Weitek, Cyrix, some others I think) had produced 387 compatible chips that were faster and cheaper than Intel's. For the 486, Intel decided to integrate the floating point unit, which made it pretty much impossible to buy someone else's chip. Sure there were technical merits to that, but I'm sure that fact that it killed any possible competition in the FPU market wasn't lost on Intel's execs.
Trying to bundle products is nothing new. A company that makes a whole package doesn't like it when parts of the package can be bought from other companies. Instead of just competing for the whole package (and the few companies who can provide that), they need to compete for each individual part, and every company that can make any one of those parts. If AMD puts the GPU in the CPU, then it's pretty hard for nvidia get OEM's to include their GPU. Nvidia will have to build a CPU that's as good as AMD's, and that's not going to happen any time soon.
I think people are forgetting the idea that the integrated "GPU" is going to be more like a programmable DSP than an actual graphics accelerator. We know the CPU is wonderful at computing integer math, but it's always been lacking in floating point. The modern GPU has become a floating point monster. The integration of this new element, including instructions to utilize it in native "stream processing" will likely cause a small leap forward in computing power. So, please, don't think of this as a replacement to your video card, put more like an evolution in the area of math-coprocessors.
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Why don't you ask AMD, as they've apparently already considered it, or they wouldn't be talking about putting both the CPU and the GPU in the same package.
Without knowing anything about it, it would seem that if CPU+GPU in the same package is possible, then CPU + GPU in two separate CPU sized packages would be possible.
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