So...cache?
this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2023
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multibillion dollar company discovers the memory hierarchy
could the next big leap be integrating instructions and data in the same memory store?
The article does not say if they'd innovated enough to produce capacitor-based DRAM with the CPU on the same die. I guess it would come in 1GB variant if they managed that.
256 compute cores, each with its own memory
I haven't really kept up with it but doesn't the zen architecture have separate L1 and L2 for each core?
Even if it does it isn't the same thing. The article explains everything
NorthPole is made of 256 computing units, or cores, each of which contains its own memory... The cores are wired together in a network inspired by the white-matter connections between parts of the human cerebral cortex, Modha says. This and other design principles — most of which existed before but had never been combined in one chip — enable NorthPole to beat existing AI machines
Isn't this a Soc?
Shhhh, we need to pretend like it's something new for our investors!
Now we will be able to get completely false, made up answers even faster!
While this will speed up loads of things, it also feels like this will end up being another way to remove upgradability from devices. Want more ram in your desktop buy a new cpu.
The article says the whole CPU has like 200MB of memory, so it's not really replacing the RAM already in PCs. Plus this seems focused on AI applications, not general computing.
hits blunt That's just your opinion, man.
And that's fair, at the same time it's still quite new, once it's matured a bit I could definitely see this being how things go until...idk, hardlight computing or w.e
Well, in the meantime, if you want to be angry at lack of upgrade options, we can be angry together at cellphones TODAY. Heck, some laptops too.
So... they'll probably add some slower, larger-capacity memory chips on the side, and then they'll need to copy data back and forth between the slow off-chip memory and the fast on-chip memory... I'm pretty sure they've just invented cache
I mean the physical distance between the RAM and CPU will eventually be the limiting factor right? It's inevitable for more reasons than profit
Yeah, that's absolutely true, doesn't mean I have to like it. 😭😭
So... They re-invented the Harvard architecture and added more cores?
Right, like I'm going to believe Baylor Swift.
.../s