

Intel Launches Atom CPU With Integrated FPGA - tankenmate
http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/10/11/23/0642238/Intel-Launches-Atom-CPU-With-Integrated-FPGA

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jwr
This is quite interesting. I wonder how capable the platform will be. The
article doesn't have many details, unfortunately.

Several years ago I was looking for a chip we could use in a set-top box
design. We wanted low-power high-performance H.264 decoding. We talked to a
very interesting company — Stretch Inc. (<http://stretchinc.com/>), they've
been developing something similar for many years now. They basically have a
CPU with a tightly-integrated FPGA within.

Problem is, the devil is in the details. While FPGAs can theoretically provide
impressive acceleration, what ends up mattering is whether you can get them
data to process fast enough, what the latencies are, what the interfaces are,
and how much easily-accessible memory you have on the FPGA die. That's for the
easier algorithms which are mostly CPU-bound.

For memory-bound algorithms what really matters is the DMA engine. That is
something Intel never got right, which is why you see Texas Instruments DSPs
in most embedded applications. If you want to have predictable high-throughput
data processing, you need to be in control of your caches. That means a
multichannel DMA engine that lets you schedule reads ahead of time and
precisely control what is in your L1/L2 at any given time. The ubiquitous
n-way set associative caches are great for general-purpose code, but end up
being wildly unpredictable for DSP-type stuff.

Another factor with FPGAs is how quickly they can be reconfigured — how
quickly can you switch the code inside? Can you use the FPGA for several parts
of your data pipeline, or does the reconfiguration take so long that it
becomes impractical to switch?

So, I will be very interested in what the details are — but for the moment
color me skeptical. It took Stretch many years to get to a well-designed
architecture and even that wasn't right for all purposes. And Intel isn't
known for experience with DSPs, which really matters here.

Note I didn't even mention compiler support, OS support and how the FPGA is
actually to be programmed. I consider those to be secondary to actual hardware
performance.

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JoachimSchipper
_Really_ nice. Some things are _much_ faster to do in hardware, and this makes
it really easy.

That said, why not link to [http://www.thinq.co.uk/2010/11/22/intel-launches-
fpga-equipp...](http://www.thinq.co.uk/2010/11/22/intel-launches-fpga-
equipped-atom/) instead of slashdot?

~~~
tankenmate
I should have, it was pre-caffeine manoeuvre; mea culpa.

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1amzave
Related/competing: Xilinx's "Extensible Processing Platform", a SoC with dual
Cortex-A9 cores + various hard-IP peripherals + FPGA fabric
([http://www.xilinx.com/technology/roadmap/processing-
platform...](http://www.xilinx.com/technology/roadmap/processing-
platform.htm)).

I'm interested to see where these chips go.

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lwhi
I'm completely in love with FPGAs and the possibilities that they bring. But,
they bring a number of problems with them.

Because the core designs used are generally protected as intellectual
property, all of the problems commerce currently has in relation to IP
protection, are duplicated in this area of hardware design.

It seems that in the new coming digital age, ideas really are the main
currency - and at the moment I can't really understand how things are going to
pan out economically. Our traditional economic models (with scarcity driving
price upwards) don't seem to sit well with IP (where abundance is unlimited).

I can only imagine that these IP problems will become more complex as time
goes by - even more new IP markets are going to be formed in the near future,
as rapid-prototyping and 3D printing become more commonplace.

~~~
JoachimSchipper
> even more new IP markets are going to be formed in the near future

Well, we'll have either that, or rampant piracy...

~~~
lwhi
.. or (more optimistically) cultural and economic change that lets IP exchange
hands freely without cost :)

~~~
JoachimSchipper
Yes, that's what I said. ;-)

Seriously, though, if you're an American or citizen of a Western country, you
should be careful what you wish for. The fact that the Western world still
owns pretty much all IP is a huge economic advantage, as long as everyone
honors it. And the so-called "knowledge economy" only works if knowledge can
actually be said.

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doosra
Does any one know the specs of the FPGA? How many LUTS/block rams?

I think its exciting that Intel has started to pay attention to FPGAs, and
hopefully with mass production, this FPGA+CPU chip will be priced cheaply---
that may yet be the biggest contribution here.

~~~
daeken
I'm also curious as to how this will interact with system memory and IO. Not
many details, but I can't help but be insanely excited -- this opens up so
many possibilities in terms of crypto... not to mention the demoscene!

Edit: Just got the product brief. Some more info on the FPGA:

> Features transceiver speeds up to 3.125 Gbps, high-speed LVDS with SERDES at
> up to 840 Mbps, support for DDR3, DDR2, DDR SDRAM, QDR II, and QDR II+ SRAM
> memory interfacing, up to four general-purpose PLLs, 312 18 x 18 multipliers
> and more than 60,000 logic elements and 350 user I/O pins. Each of the high-
> speed transceiver channels have a clock data recovery (CDR) feature, and
> support for multiple I/O standards such as 3.3-V LVTTL/3.3-V LVCMOS, single-
> ended SSTL/HSTL and differential SSTL/HSTL.

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Symmetry
So this is how Intel is going to go after the embedded space without having to
offer embeddable CPUs. ARM has done very well because people like cell phone
manufacturers can take an ARM attach some specialized cellphone DSP logic, and
put it in a cellphone as one space-saving package. Since Intel was never going
to allow something like this it was a big factor holding them back, but with
an FPGA that third parties can put their specialized cellphone or whatever
stuff in Intel will be able to get into this game at only a minor
disadvantage.

~~~
supahfly_remix
For high-volume, low-margin embedded applications (like cellphones) FPGAs are
not cost-effective. They also don't offer the circuit density or the power-
savings of custom chips.

~~~
rdtsc
I was going to say the same thing. The price is already too high. At $60-$100
I think it is already too pricey if they are aiming for the same embedded
market.

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space-monkey
Altera (and probably others) has been shipping ARM + FPGA SoCs for years:
<http://www.altera.com/products/devices/arm/arm-index.html>

Interestingly, Altera has basically end-of-lifed that approach in favor of
their NIOS II soft CPU. Atom is definitely a bit higher end than NIOS.

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iwr
Would this also mean new C programming libraries for the FPGA?

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pmjordan
I too am wondering about how the FPGA will be accessed from software. I can
only assume that there's a built-in DMA interface, and that only one process
can grab the FPGA at a time.

~~~
lwhi
Why would it need to be accessed from software? There's probably a strong
likelihood that hardware manufacturers will configure the FPGA in the factory,
and the end-user will end up oblivious to the fact it's even there.

~~~
dkersten
Thats the more likely scenario, but also the much less interesting one, since,
at least for me, the possibility of runtime reconfigurable hardware is what
makes me like this.

~~~
lwhi
Working with FPGA's isn't the black-art that I thought it was.

<http://www.fpga4fun.com/> is a nice site with stuff that novices can have a
go at creating.

There's also a sister site (<http://www.knjn.com/>) where you get hold of
inexpensive FPGAs for tinkering with.

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xtacy
I hope this also means that we might see programmable datapath processors in
switches/routers in the near future! That would be way awesome.

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konad
I can foresee SSL offloading, if it can pump through 10mbps of plain->SSL

