[HN Gopher] A New Golden Age for Computer Architecture (2020) [v...
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A New Golden Age for Computer Architecture (2020) [video]
Author : pjmlp
Score : 89 points
Date : 2022-04-17 11:49 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| leoc wrote:
| As I've said before, I just find it hard to believe that the very
| foreseeable problems lurking at the intersection of speculation,
| cache and protected mode were really such an unexpected shock to
| the industry https://youtu.be/kFT54hO1X8M?t=1195 . I have a jaded
| suspicion that in fact a fair few people had some idea, but they
| said nothing and didn't look closely because it would have been
| no fun, and in some cases not career-enhancing, to be the
| Jeremiah calling for major CPU deoptimisations. OTOH the very
| security-researcher heroes whose reputation is built on
| collecting trophies didn't seem to say much either, so maybe
| everyone really was completely blindsided?
| DSingularity wrote:
| Yes they were shocked. And it is simply because even the most
| fundamental laws of security (eg security is not scheduled via
| obscurity) have flown and fly over the heads of architects.
| They don't understand software beyond the smallest of kernels
| which dominate execution time. They don't understand that
| attackers need one weakness to exploit a system. They don't
| know how to objectively analyze systems to prioritize their
| weaknesses (eg seeing how the coexistence and sharing between
| mutually untrusting software is a potential threat).
|
| That's why the biggest computer architecture breakdown came
| from outside the comp arch community.
| ynniv wrote:
| I have anecdata that there were people who raised those exact
| concerns in those exact companies and were brushed off. If the
| companies were honestly surprised, it's because they purposely
| turned a deaf ear to the problem for the sake of greater
| revenue. But nothing really happened to those companies, so
| maybe it was ultimately a strategy that worked?
| leoc wrote:
| I can't help be reminded of the big US banks and sub-prime.
| torginus wrote:
| I'm halfway through the talk and he keeps mentioning points that
| are strangely reminiscent of things that usually come up when
| people like Mike Acton talk about Data-Oriented-Design, and
| writing code for the PS3's PPE-s
| pjmlp wrote:
| Nowadays he is working on the DOTS/Burst compiler team at
| Unity.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _A New Golden Age for Computer Architecture_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19237702 - Feb 2019 (8
| comments)
|
| _A New Golden Age for Computer Architecture_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19023734 - Jan 2019 (84
| comments)
|
| Also related:
|
| _John Hennessy and David Patterson Turing Award Lectures (2018)
| [video]_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18118957 - Oct
| 2018 (5 comments)
|
| _Hennessy and Patterson win Turing Award_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16637803 - March 2018 (32
| comments)
| cosmiccatnap wrote:
| The innovation we are all waiting on is an SSD which has the
| speed and performance of RAM such that they become one in the
| same. With some chip yields as low as 30% we are approaching the
| limit of shrinking transistors and the next 10 years of
| innovation will have to be architectural. The idea of photon
| computers is also a direction we will see more research into and
| might be about to get a 1mhz light processor by 2030
| imglorp wrote:
| Are memristors still 5 years away or did HP bury those for
| business reasons?
| WaxProlix wrote:
| Yeah what's going on? I bought a chunk of HP stock 10 years
| ago on the assumption they'd be revolutionizing swaths of the
| computing industry and it never materialized.
| astrange wrote:
| I think if you have a bet like that it'd make more sense to
| buy a sector ETF.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > HP ... revolutionizing swaths of the computing industry
|
| Heh... Yeah, I don't HP in it's current incarnation can
| revolutionize anything.
| WaxProlix wrote:
| That was sort of hyperbole, but the question stands :)
| amelius wrote:
| Persistent storage is not really a bottleneck. Single-threaded
| performance is. This is the innovation we are waiting for.
| lisper wrote:
| > The innovation we are all waiting on is an SSD which has the
| speed and performance of RAM
|
| I've often wondered why no one offers a product that consists
| of DRAM with an integrated battery. Every portable device, when
| it goes into sleep mode, constitutes an existence proof that
| this could work. You could even integrate this with a regular
| SSD to provide persistence when the battery dies.
| sophacles wrote:
| This has existed in various forms through the years:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAM_drive (section: Dedicated
| hardware RAM drives)
|
| It's non-existence (or at least extreme difficulty to
| locate)for current gen tech suggests that it doesn't improve
| performance enough to be worth the tradeoffs, but I'm not an
| expert in that at all.
| bXVsbGVy wrote:
| You can create persistent ramdisk with tmpfs.
|
| Add some batteries and a cronjob with rsync and you have the
| product you are looking for.
| pkaye wrote:
| They exist mostly for servers. The capacity is much smaller
| since DRAM is much more expensive.
|
| http://www.ddrdrive.com/
| Avlin67 wrote:
| there even was NVDIMM
| Jason_Gibson wrote:
| A company called Violin Memory used to make one for servers:
|
| http://www.storagesearch.com/ssd-23.html
| dboreham wrote:
| This has been done for decades. For various reasons it hasn't
| become mainstream. Cost of DRAM is one of those reasons.
| xyzzy21 wrote:
| In theory, that would be MRAM - SRAM speeds, Non-volatile.
| Except as should be expected - there are details that have to
| be worked out in depth to ever allow such a substitution.
| pocholo wrote:
| alcover wrote:
| Warning : video volume is low and cranking it up will rape your
| ears with sporadic screeching glitches.
| vincent-manis wrote:
| I had no problem with the volume when viewing this on my Mac in
| Safari.
|
| I too consider the use of the word `rape' unfortunate.
| human_person wrote:
| Is it really necessary to use the term rape here?
|
| I'd love to be able to browse hn threads on computer
| architecture without being reminded of the last time I (or a
| friend) was sexually assaulted.
|
| And I dont think that particular term adds any clarity to your
| comment.
| [deleted]
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