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I don't think we get rid of the CPU. But the relationship will be inverted. Instead of the CPU calling the GPU, it might be that the GPU becomes the central con
by spot5010 7mo ago
I don't think we get rid of the CPU. But the relationship will be inverted. Instead of the CPU calling the GPU, it might be that the GPU becomes the central controller and builds programs and calls the CPU to execute tasks.
- treyd 7mo agoThis will never without completely reimagining how process isolation works and rewriting any OS you'd want to run on that architecture.
- pklausler 7mo agoSounds reminiscent of the CDC 6600, a big fast compute processor with a simple peripheral processor whose barreled threads ran lots of the O/S and took care of I/O and other necessary support functions.
- jerf 7mo agoBut... why? How do you win moving your central controller from a 4GHz CPU to a multi-hundred-MHz single GPU core? If we tried this, all we'd do is isolate a couple of cores in the GPU, let them run at some gigahertz, and then equip them with the additional operations they'd need to be good at coordinating tasks... or, in other words, put a CPU in the GPU.
- layla5alive 7mo agoSurprise: there are already CPUs in the GPU - they're called things like "Command Processor" (but not only) - they're often tiny in-order ARM or RISC-V cores.