Microsoft Bets Its Future on a Reprogrammable Computer Chip

Re:Microsoft Bets Its Future on a Reprogrammable Computer Chip by xt00 on Sunday September 25, 2016 @09:29PM (#12578584)

It's a little odd saying that Microsoft is betting its future on reprogramable chips.. From reading the article they are just simply now using FPGAs where previously they (along with many other companies) were not. It would be like saying Amazon is betting its future on UPS trucks.. What you put in the FPGA matters.. The reprogramability is really just to allow them to implement algorithms that they use heavily that currently are not executed efficiently using current Intel chips. Basically what this is showing us is that the pace of development in software and algorithms that power the cloud is pretty fast so they need the ability to improve performance on data and computation flows that currently (and maybe in the future) will not be well supported on current silicon. FPGAs are not very cost efficient, so unlikely they would not buy that many compared to the number of Intel processors and nvidia gpus. They basically fill in gaps that currently are not being well supported. Intel now owns Alterra so this internal thrust at MSFT may be why they bought them..

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Re:Microsoft Bets Its Future on a Reprogrammable Computer Chip by RandomOpinion on Sunday September 25, 2016 @09:39PM (#12578634)

>Intel now owns Alterra so this internal thrust at MSFT may be why they bought them.

Intel openly acknowledges it. From the article:

"Microsoft’s services are so large, and they use so many FPGAs, that they’re shifting the worldwide chip market. The FPGAs come from a company called Altera, and Intel vice president Diane Bryant tells me that Microsoft is why Intel acquired Altera last summer—a deal worth $16.7 billion, the largest acquisition in the history of the largest chipmaker on Earth. By 2020, she says, a third of all servers inside all the major cloud computing companies will include FPGAs."

Altera strikes me as an odd choice though. I'd have thought Intel would buy out Xilinx, the industry leader, instead.

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Re:Microsoft Bets Its Future on a Reprogrammable Computer Chip by mastax on Sunday September 25, 2016 @10:02PM (#12578731)

>Altera strikes me as an odd choice though. I'd have thought Intel would buy out Xilinx, the industry leader, instead.

Intel had been fabbing (some of?) Altera's chips for a few years before the acquisition, so from this angle it makes more sense than Xilinx. As to why Altera had this partnership and not Xilinx, who knows. Perhaps being in second place motivates you to shake things up.

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Re:Microsoft Bets Its Future on a Reprogrammable Computer Chip by totalZero on Monday September 26, 2016 @05:05AM (#12580338)

My understanding is that Intel has a service called Intel Custom Foundry that gives smaller partner companies access to Intel's fabrication pipeline. Altera was a client of Intel Custom Foundry, and the two companies started to build some FPGA-accelerated x86 products together, so it was a pretty natural acquisition versus a potential Xilinx deal.

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Re:Microsoft Bets Its Future on a Reprogrammable Computer Chip by friendzis on Monday September 26, 2016 @06:40AM (#12580709)

From my own experience Altera floods education/research facilities with free-or-cheap developement boards and tools compared to Xilinx. Much like Atmel or Microsoft itself. Microsoft already has large programs to grow users for their software and Altera is more suitable in this regard.

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Re:Microsoft Bets Its Future on a Reprogrammable Computer Chip by nickpsecurity on Sunday September 25, 2016 @09:44PM (#12578652)

They're similar in capabilities, Altera's tooling is easier-to-use per comments I see, and it's much cheaper buy. Funny thing was that, when Intel was buying Altera, people were suggesting Xilinx should buy AMD. That's how funny the financial situation is between top CPU and FPGA vendors. Haha.

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Re:Microsoft Bets Its Future on a Reprogrammable Computer Chip by qq66 on Monday September 26, 2016 @12:43AM (#12579287)

In heavily scale-dependent industries there's often an enormous financial gap between #1 and #2. Compare Intel's CPU profits to AMD's, Nvidia's to formerly ATI, Xilinx to Altera, Apple to Samsung, etc.

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Re:Microsoft Bets Its Future on a Reprogrammable Computer Chip by nickpsecurity on Monday September 26, 2016 @01:28AM (#12579435)

It's true. Comes from First Mover Advantage that I'm aware of. I used to say go for quality first but these days I'm likely to tell people to be first to ship with extra care on upgradeable interfaces. Then you get First Mover Advantage plus ability to fix the BS it causes.

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Re:Microsoft Bets Its Future on a Reprogrammable Computer Chip by WheelsAtLarge on Monday September 26, 2016 @12:01AM (#12579141)

I think they have no choice. Current cpus have hit a wall when it comes to speed so they have to find other ways to speed up the software.

Yes, FPGAs are a pain to program now but so were general purpose CPU's in the early days. Given time and innovation that will change. We are headed towards a time where most algorithms will be run off specialized chips rather than a general purpose CPUs. It's only a matter of time.

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Re:Microsoft Bets Its Future on a Reprogrammable Computer Chip by pjc50 on Monday September 26, 2016 @04:32AM (#12580192)

For me the question of "flexibility" ties to the tools. Anyone who's ever tried to do FPGA development will know that it's not exactly agile. Third-party improvement of tools is blocked, because the "bitstream" format is confidential. Imagine if Intel or ARM refused to give you an instruction set manual and made you use a slow proprietary compiler with encrypted outputs.

Without great improvement and opening of the tools, FPGAs aren't going to be a general-purpose accelerator. It'll be a question of building one specific piece of firmware for one specific project and then deploying it semi-permanently with minor revisions across the cloud.

Wake me up when Visual Studio has an FPGA backend.

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Re:Microsoft Bets Its Future on a Reprogrammable Computer Chip by friendzis on Monday September 26, 2016 @06:36AM (#12580691)

It is also possible that Microsoft leverages reprogramability of FPGAs to iterate over some designs that will at some point land in Intel chips. FPGA is probably the only solution that is both relatively cost efficient and real silicon allowing to iterate over silicon designs.

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