»

[SysAdmin]

News from Kickstarter

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...r-for-everyone

Project Goals

Making parallel computing easy to use has been described as "a problem as hard as any that computer science has faced". With such a big challenge ahead, we need to make sure that every programmer has access to cheap and open parallel hardware and development tools. Inspired by great hardware communities like Raspberry Pi and Arduino, we see a critical need for a truly open, high-performance computing platform that will close the knowledge gap in parallel programing. The goal of the Parallella project is to democratize access to parallel computing. If we can pull this off, who knows what kind of breakthrough applications could arise? Maybe some of them will even change the world in some small but positive way.

Read more via the link below.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/...r-for-everyone

http://arstechnica.com/information-t...kstarter-goal/

[Iggy]

So they reached their funding goal, eh?
I'm still not clear on the advantages over GPGPU computing that this represents, but the 45GHz description is very misleading.

By this way of adding all the cores together, a Freescale P5040 is an 8.8 to 10 GHz processor. Total BS.

[TheBilgeRat]

Democratize parallel computing? That sounds like communist talk.

[runequester]

Originally Posted by TheBilgeRat

Democratize parallel computing? That sounds like communist talk.

...you called?

[Kesa]

I agree. Communism has unnecessarily been given a bad reputation. Vice versa democracy has unnecessarily been given a good reputation.

[XDelusion]

Originally Posted by Kesa

I agree. Communism has unnecessarily been given a bad reputation. Vice versa democracy has unnecessarily been given a good reputation.

Mud spelled backwards is dum.

[Kesa]

Originally Posted by XDelusion

Mud spelled backwards is dum.

[Skyrunner]

Originally Posted by TheBilgeRat

Democratize parallel computing? That sounds like communist talk.

Democracy and communism have never really co-existed and cannot by definition.

[vidarh]

Originally Posted by Iggy

So they reached their funding goal, eh?
I'm still not clear on the advantages over GPGPU computing that this represents, but the 45GHz description is very misleading.

By this way of adding all the cores together, a Freescale P5040 is an 8.8 to 10 GHz processor. Total BS.

The "45GHz" stuff is blatantly misleading, yes, and they've admitted it was a stupid way of describing it.

Though as for what this brings vs. GPGPU: These are 16 totally independent full RISC cores (later 64 cores, eventually they hope to get 1024 to 4096 cores per chip) , rather than SIMD units.

You see the big difference if you try to write code for it that require branches. A typical GPU has a small number of cores with a large number of data streams. So, say a GPU that can handle 16 data streams might "only" be able to handle 4 separate control flows. If you need branches that are taken for individual data streams within one of those cores, usually that means that stream is just "paused" while the rest process the instructions in between.

As such, GPU's are very efficient at handling data streams where you do exactly the same on a large number of sets of data (say, multiple a large number of pixels by the same value, or by values from another bitmap, or whatever), but horribly inefficient when the processing varies significantly for each stream of data. E.g. consider AI's where the decision trees might diverge massively depending on data encountered, or simulations where the data is highly interdependent (e.g. stuff simulated on one core should immediately affect the things on the other cores).

This is the kind of stuff that Adapteva's chips might be exciting for.

Especially if/when they get their higher core-count chips out the door. The 16 core version is frankly mostly interesting for developers to get a taste of the architecture and possible for very low end embedded solution (cell phones...). The performance they've shown with the 16 core version is impressive for a $99 board, but nothing an average desktop wouldn't be able to match or beat.

In architecture this is closer to an XMOS chip than a GPU, though faster clocked cores and a memory architecture that makes it simpler to work with (each core has 32KB in-core static RAM, but can also, subject to timing differences, transparently access the memory of all the other cores and main memory). They're also obviously aiming for a much higher number of cores.

[Kesa]

Originally Posted by Skyrunner

Democracy and communism have never really co-existed and cannot by definition.

In theory maybe, but in reality democracy is only an idea that looks good on paper but isn't so good when applied. To me it seems communism and democracy have more in common than people would like to admit.

[Iggy]

Thanks Vidarh.
Now Kesa, there has never been a pure democracy and never will be.
And Communism has never been practiced outside of Walden Pond.
Rather, you have either Socialism or a combination of Socialism with Totalitariainism.

Communism as a form of government simply doesn't work on a large or small scale.

For a good example read "Animal Farm".

[runequester]

There's more to class struggle than just soviet socialism.

On topic, this is a kinda neat project. I guess it's still in the "neat idea" stage, but cool nevertheless. THis does have the "smell" of a kickstarter that may end up being far more difficult to realize than expected.

[TheBilgeRat]

Originally Posted by Skyrunner

Democracy and communism have never really co-existed and cannot by definition.

You must not follow the american electoral cycle

[Iggy]

Originally Posted by TheBilgeRat

You must not follow the american electoral cycle

Hey, we didn't start talking about fiction or facism yet.

[vidarh]

Originally Posted by Iggy

For a good example read "Animal Farm".

Animal Farm was a criticism of Bolchevism and specifically Stalinism, not communism, driven in part by Orwells observations of the Soviet Union, in part by his first hand experience of how the NKVD were quite literally shooting socialists, anarchists and anti-Stalinist communists in the back in Spain during the Spanish Civil War to weed out democratic socialists that might pose a threat to Soviet interests. They were more worried about democratic socialists than about the fascist takeover of Spain...