Wednesday starts with a visionary talk followed by a keynote. … The keynote was given by David A. Patterson of Google and the University of California, Berkeley and looked at “A New Golden age for Computer Architecture: Domain Specific Accelerators and Open RISC-V.”
He started by looking at computer architectures through history, ending up with the progression that led to the predecessors of RISC-V. Then he went through the challenges we are seeing today. “We are now seeing a doubling every twenty years,” he said, adding that we have an embarrassing situation with security. “Spectre shows that we have put performance over security.”
The third part of the talk was spent looking at opportunities, where “the only thing left is domain specific architectures and languages.” He used Tensor as an example to show how significant the improvements can be. The conversation returned to the birth of RISC-V and the fact that an open architecture will help with security. The final part of the talk looked at the Agile development methodology and how it applies to the development of hardware. His conclusion was that it is now quicker, cheaper and easier to create chips than it has been for long time. Nobody has any excuses any more. He pointed to the number of chips that his university had created recently and said you can get 100 chips for about $15,000.
To read more, please visit: https://semiengineering.com/wednesday-at-dac-2018/
The third part of the talk was spent looking at opportunities, where “the only thing left is domain specific architectures and languages.” He used Tensor as an example to show how significant the improvements can be. The conversation returned to the birth of RISC-V and the fact that an open architecture will help with security. The final part of the talk looked at the Agile development methodology and how it applies to the development of hardware. His conclusion was that it is now quicker, cheaper and easier to create chips than it has been for long time. Nobody has any excuses any more. He pointed to the number of chips that his university had created recently and said you can get 100 chips for about $15,000.
To read more, please visit: https://semiengineering.com/wednesday-at-dac-2018/