By: Stanislav Shwartsman (stanislav.shwartsman.delete@this.intel.com), March 20, 2021 6:22 am
Room: Moderated Discussions
Moritz (better.delete@this.not.tell) on March 20, 2021 5:21 am wrote:
> What if you could completely rethink the general processor concept?
> There are concepts that were without alternative in the days of little memory and few transistors:
> Sequential instructions by storage address and jumps based on that address
> Implicit dependency based on above principle
> Explicit naming of storage place rather than data item
> Explicit caching into registers
> Implicit addressing of registers
> Mixing of memory, float, integer instructions in one instruction stream
> that must be analyzed to remove the assumed sequentiallity.
> The ISA used to represent the physical architecture, today that
> is no longer the case in high performance microprocessors.
> The data modifies the program flow at run-time, instead of explicitly generating the data stream
> that reaches the execution units. The CPU steps through the program issuing the data to EUs instead
> of the program explicitly generating multiple data streams with synchronization markers.
> ... and many other implications that are so "natural" to us that we can not see/name them. As usual
> we can not even question the ways, because we are so used to them. There are infinite bad ways of doing
> it, but some of those forced/obvious (legacy) design decisions of the past might no longer be that
> necessary/without alternative. Some ways that seem cumbersome and wasteful might on second thought
> turn out to be hard on the human, but open new ways to the compiler, RTE, OS, CPU removing as much
> complexity as they add, but increasing throughput or energy efficiency beyond the current limit.
Do you want a short answer ? A long answer would be as big as new revision of Hennessy and Patterson book.
My vision was greatly inspired by Boris Babayan VIP architecture.
But as usual when I look on a paper or a concept (or even a religion) I misunderstand in my own unique way and get my own architecture out of it)
You may see Babayan talking about Future here https://www.arccn.ru/media/babayan_video/
Stanislav
> What if you could completely rethink the general processor concept?
> There are concepts that were without alternative in the days of little memory and few transistors:
> Sequential instructions by storage address and jumps based on that address
> Implicit dependency based on above principle
> Explicit naming of storage place rather than data item
> Explicit caching into registers
> Implicit addressing of registers
> Mixing of memory, float, integer instructions in one instruction stream
> that must be analyzed to remove the assumed sequentiallity.
> The ISA used to represent the physical architecture, today that
> is no longer the case in high performance microprocessors.
> The data modifies the program flow at run-time, instead of explicitly generating the data stream
> that reaches the execution units. The CPU steps through the program issuing the data to EUs instead
> of the program explicitly generating multiple data streams with synchronization markers.
> ... and many other implications that are so "natural" to us that we can not see/name them. As usual
> we can not even question the ways, because we are so used to them. There are infinite bad ways of doing
> it, but some of those forced/obvious (legacy) design decisions of the past might no longer be that
> necessary/without alternative. Some ways that seem cumbersome and wasteful might on second thought
> turn out to be hard on the human, but open new ways to the compiler, RTE, OS, CPU removing as much
> complexity as they add, but increasing throughput or energy efficiency beyond the current limit.
Do you want a short answer ? A long answer would be as big as new revision of Hennessy and Patterson book.
My vision was greatly inspired by Boris Babayan VIP architecture.
But as usual when I look on a paper or a concept (or even a religion) I misunderstand in my own unique way and get my own architecture out of it)
You may see Babayan talking about Future here https://www.arccn.ru/media/babayan_video/
Stanislav
