'Pruned' Microchips Twice As Fast and Efficient

Zothecula writes "If you had to use a commuting bicycle in a race, you would probably set about removing the kickstand, fenders, racks and lights to make the thing as fast and efficient as possible. When engineers at Houston's Rice University are developing small, fast, energy-efficient chips for use in devices like hearing aids, it turns out they do pretty much the same thing. The removal of portions of circuits that aren't essential to the task at hand is known as 'probabilistic pruning,' and it results in chips that are twice as fast, use half the power, and are half the size of conventional chips."

Comments

Hm

[mewshi_nya]

It's news that removing unnecessary parts of a circuit make it more efficient? Really?

Re:Hm

[Shikaku]

I think the news is they developed a heuristic of least used parts of a chip, slapped on a tiny emulator so functions don't fail, and call it a day.

For example, Chip $foo has functions A B C D E & F. E is used on average once every gigaflop, so using the CPU/other functions, they implement E and cut out all parts for E.

Re:Hm

[Chelloveck]

For example, Chip $foo has functions A B C D E & F. E is used on average once every gigaflop, so using the CPU/other functions, they implement E and cut out all parts for E.

The best part is that this can be applied iteratively. Once E is eliminated there's a new "least used" function which can be eliminated. By extension, any CPU can ultimately be pruned down to a single NOP instruction, with the entire rest of the instruction set emulated in software.

Re:Hm

[ZankerH]

Already been done, it's called one instruction set computing, and it makes brainfuck look like python in comparison.

Now my computer won't start up!

[ClaraBow]

I was trying to make it more efficient by getting rid of some of the unused cores, so I got a pair of scissors and pruned off a couple of those cores. I put the pruned, aero dynamic chip back in my machine and now it won't start up! On the plus side, the power savings are noticeable :)

Slashdot cynics are right again

[russotto]

Someone's going to chime in and say that the naysayers are oversimplifying or denigrating this because they didn't think of it, but I think the quote below says enough.

"I believe this is the first time someone has taken an integrated circuit and said, 'Let's get rid of the part that we don't need,'" said principal investigator Krishna Palem, a Professor of Computing at Rice.

Uh, no, Professor, I don't believe it is.

That's fine ...

[PPH]

... for a specific application, like a hearing aid. Not so good for microprocessors intended for general purpose use (broad markets).

If you have sufficient market volume, you can afford to produce some sort of 'application specific integrate circuit'. Hmm, an ASIC. Now there's a novel idea (putting on jacket to make a dash to the patent office).

Madman Muntz famous(and rich)for this last century

[shoppa]

Removing unnecessary parts from a circuit until it stops working, is now something "new"?

From Wikipedia entry on Madman Muntz:

Muntz played the madman in his unorthodox television commercials, but in fact he was a shrewd businessman and a self-taught electrical engineer. By trial and error, taking apart and studying Philco, RCA, and DuMont televisions, he figured out how to reduce the devices' electrical components to their minimum functional number. This practice became known as "Muntzing".
He often carried a pair of wire clippers, and when he thought that one of his employees was "over-engineering" a circuit, he would begin snipping components out until the picture or sound stopped working. At that point, he would tell the engineer "Well, I guess you have to put that last part back in" and walk away.

erm

[DaveGod]

"I believe this is the first time someone has taken an integrated circuit and said, 'Let's get rid of the part that we don't need,'"

I believe this to be a basic part of design.