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Re:AMD Tackles Coming “Chiplet” Revolution With New Chip Net... by sixdimensional on Sunday June 24, 2018 @12:48PM (#17387202)
I wonder if FPGAs could be a node too. That would allow us to mix programmable, highly parallel analog modeled acceleration onto the same high speed / direct connect bus as all the other fixed, traditional computing components. I really like the approach AMD is suggesting here, treating it like nodes on a network.
Re:AMD Tackles Coming “Chiplet” Revolution With New Chip Net... by greglindahl on Sunday June 24, 2018 @01:09PM (#17387265)
You've been able to buy FPGAs tightly coupled with AMD CPUs since 2006 or so. The tech back then was to either plug them into an HTX Hypertransport slot, or in a cpu socket. Very few customers actually wanted to buy these things and I think all of the makers lost money.
Re:AMD Tackles Coming “Chiplet” Revolution With New Chip Net... by daveguy on Sunday June 24, 2018 @06:13PM (#17388659)
They definitely are missing an application that probably won't be coming until specialized chip designs are a commodity (eg agi+). Right now you can get specialized chips for much less than the cost of the programmable chip + custom design. Once a company identifies a kick-ass fpga design (and it has any decent market) they move to asic to drive down costs. I guess if fpga costs were as low as an asic it would be viable as you could change the application depending on current needs. But currently fpga chips are 10-100x the cost of asics.
Re:AMD Tackles Coming “Chiplet” Revolution With New Chip Net... by st26 on Sunday June 24, 2018 @09:12PM (#17389298)
Hypothetically, yes. But FPGA's are very area-hungry; a big powerful one isn't going to fit nicely into a modestly sized package along with lots of other chips.