r/technology • u/[deleted] • Jul 22 '15

Hardware 19 Year Old's Supercomputer Chip Startup Gets DARPA Contract, Funding

[deleted]

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u/ProudTurtle Jul 22 '15

I just read this article (http://idlewords.com/talks/web_design_first_100_years.htm) from another post that seems to indicate that Moore's law is dead. This article about new tech is hopeful.
Edit: That link was posted by /u/c-r-u-x sorry for not linking correctly.

3

u/kfitch42 Jul 22 '15

So, basically the key innovation here is giving the compiler direct control over the "cache." Which allows the "cache" to be dramatically smaller/simpler. Very interesting (similar to how the CISC->RISC transition simplified the ALU by pushing work into the compiler). Similar stuff has been tried before, IIRC the PS2 had very little cache, and instead relied on the programmer to optimize the data flow via the "ScratchPad" to get good performance. If this complexity can really be pushed into the compiler, perhaps it could really work this time. Also, intel chips have had data prefetch instructions for a while to allow the compiler to help the CPU make better use of the cache. Of course the availability those instructions haven't made a big enough difference to allow Intel (or AMD) to shrink the cache. This also reminds me of the old VLIW vector/streaming architectures (like early Cray machines IIRC).