

The Convey HC-2 Computer – Architectural Overview [pdf] - minthd
http://www.conveycomputer.com/files/4113/5394/7097/Convey_HC-2_Architectual_Overview.pdf

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jandrewrogers
These kinds of architectures are pretty cool to play with but getting good
performance out of them comes with an important caveat that is not immediately
obvious to many people.

It is not sufficient to recompile your C/C++ code to gain the performance
advantages, you have to redesign the data structures in your code to match the
characteristics of the hardware. For many code bases, redesigning all of your
data structures is tantamount to a rewrite. This is not something a compiler
can do for you automagically.

A follow-on caveat is that to design optimal data structures for these types
of architectures, you need to be comfortable with understanding how silicon
actually works and know how to do microarchitecture specific optimization in
high-level code. Someone who has these skills can usually squeeze out several
times the performance of typical software code on more vanilla CPUs, which
closes the performance gap quite a bit and for some codes the latest greatest
Intel CPU will actually be faster than a hybrid architecture.

The thing to keep in mind is that most benchmark comparisons I've seen for
these types of architectures are (1) narrowly selected for workloads where
they excel and (2) usually compare naively optimized CPU code with expertly
optimized coprocessor code. In reality, due to skill availability you often
see the reverse with expertly optimized CPU code and naively optimized
coprocessor code that virtually erases the apparent performance advantages.

The major hurdle for exotic coprocessor architectures is that expert code
designers that know how to exploit and use these architectures are incredibly
rare. Consequently, you rarely see what they can actually do. Intel's Xeon Phi
coprocessor has had similar issues.

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minthd
If the story this article tells us is true, the FPGA part(i.e. the
"personality ") is optimizied by the guys at convey , which created a variety
of profiles for specific application areas - and that supposed to take most of
the burden of understanding of an FPGA from the programmer, and he really have
to understand a high level view of that "personality".

Of course until actually using such tools, it's hard to tell. But the fact
micron, a huge company which most likely is interested in big businesses
ackuired convey, is a good sign to the use of such tools for the mass market
and not just a bunch of highly trained experts.

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mng2
Companies like Micron are looking to reduce their exposure to the commodity
hardware business by getting more into services. This platform still looks
pretty complicated to use, but Micron/Convey would probably be happy to take
care of that -- and that's probably where most of the profit is.

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minthd
Still,can convey be important to the growth/diversification of micron, a ~$35
billion company, without being big and creating at least a medium change in
the market ?

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daveloyall
2012.

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minthd
They we're recently purchased by micron -the huge memory company.

