From: Eugene Leitl (eugene.leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)
Date: Mon Jul 26 1999 - 00:31:32 MDT
Little noticed by the mainstream, the hitherto special-purpose DSPs
have matured into full computer systems on a chip. For instance the
Analog Devices SHARC DSP family
http://products.analog.com/products_html/list_gen_98_2_1.html
has a new member with the following intriguing characteristics:
600 MFlops peak
4 (soon 8) MBit on-die RAM with 1.6 GByte/s bandwidth
6 Byte-wide links, capable of 600 MBytes/s total transfer
27 mm x 27 mm PBGA with 4 W maximal heat dissipation
capability to boot from link
glueless integration into 3d DSP arrays by direct linking
pricing $10 in 100k quantities (Real Soon Now)
Obviously, by simply glueing arrays of chips onto 500 mm x 500 mm
(say, perforated copper) support, connecting the next neighbours with
links, stacking 16 of such units (~200 mm), interconnecting the stack,
we arrive at a 4 kCPU, 2 GByte RAM, 17 kW thermal dissipation, 2.5
TFlop peak, 6.5 TByte/s memory bandwidth and 2.5 TByte/s aggregate
link bandwidth in a volume of 0.05 m^3, for the raw silicon price of
~50 k$, the price of a current server or a mid-range engineering
workstation.
(17 kW in a volume thus small could be easily contained using a liquid
heat exchanger, such as a flurocarbon or a mineral oil).
As this is a 3d lattice, I can more or less (mostly for coolant
plumbing issues) easily scale this to 20 such units for budget of 1
M$. We're talking ~100 k computational elements here. (I do not gloss
over the reliability issue, the dead units can be easily managed by
software if running nonbrittle (fault-resistant) codes.
Now, we can easily dismiss the above as ravings of a geek struck with
arithmomania. However, I cannot help but wonder what such a mid-1999
technology (even barring progress in nanotechnology, we can assume
Moore will hold up to ~2010.) 1 M$ machine could accomplish, _if
properly programmed_.
Oh, we can't program it properly? But a 100 kCPU machine can shuffle
opcodes damn quickly, 24 h/day, 365 d/year. Despite all the Kozas of
this world, we cannot mutate assembler opcodes in a nonbrittle
manner. However, nothing prevents us from making a robust mutator
function our fitness goal. Find the code which mutates the machine
code without breaking it too often. Feed back the best performing
mutation function specimens back into the population searching for the
best mutation function. (Did somebody just said
"autocatalysis"?). Mix, stir, repeat until done.
Hey, can someone spare a coupla megabucks?
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