There are some people who might look at this "Agenda 21" thing and dismiss it outright as YACT (yet another conspiracy theory). Personally, I know nothing about it, so I can't comment on that.
What's on-topic here is that 120 Watts is a challenge to dissipate, and you've only covered your CPU. Add to that another couple of CPU dies, and your main memory, and all your conversion losses, and then your GPU, and you've got a row of furnaces in your datacenter. This "power wall" we keep going on about is a real problem. The original Itanium (Merced) was limited in performance not by signal delay but by heat dissipation. The clock speed and voltage had to be lowered just to make it possible to cool the chip. Later Itaniums implemented more sophisticated power management that would dynamically adjust voltage and frequency to stay within power and temperature limits. Low-end (e.g. ARM) and high-end (e.g. Xeon) make active use of clock gating (to cut switching power) and power gating (to cut switching and leakage power) for idle circuits, and it's getting to the point where the granularity of power gating is going to have to be sub-processor in order to continue to scale performance. This is the "dark silicon" problem. Tons of interesting research is being done on low-voltage circuits as yet another approach to dealing with both power limits and to improve energy efficiency in general. As for "this" project being slow: With regard to the currently active OpenShader sub-project, the contributors have been myself and Mark Marshall. I put this out to the community in the hopes that we'd get some outside help and move the project along more quickly. But frankly, I'm going to work on this with or without your help, and it's the FOSS community's loss if they don't get any say in the project direction and if things get done a lot later than they would prefer. What I can do right now is get students involved, and I'm working on that, and I can apply for NSF and other grants, and I'm working on that too. But I have other pressures. I have two major research directions. One is energy efficiency in general (related to my prior research), which I'm working to apply to GPUs, and then there's this OpenShader sub-project, which is infrastructural. Ideally, I'd do OpenShader first because it would facilitate all other research in the area, but practicality may force us to compromise. The order and proportion to which I focus on each one is going to be a function of the help I can get, because I personally can only scale so far, and Mark works on this entirely in his spare time. There needs to be more than two people on this. What is the straw man here? The fact is, this infrastructural work is going to be of immense value to researchers in GPU-related areas. Whether or not you see it as feasible to turn this into consumer-grade hardware is another matter. But if I have a complete design on my desk (part of the whole process of back-annotating a simulator with real timing and energy information), I am in an excellent position to have this funded and fabricated. On Wed, Oct 17, 2012 at 8:42 PM, Gregory Carter <[email protected]> wrote: > Critical thinking? > > That is for process and materials selection for GPU design. > > Agenda 21 has nothing to do with critical thinking, it simply _is_. > > Good Heavens! > > I would like to state for the record that no where did I say that document > in my previous citation written by the "United Nations" contained _any_ > critical thinking. If you read it, it is entirely for a different audience. > (i.e. That audience I can assure you is not anyone on this list.). > > I am not from a defense contractor. > > I am simply interested in the idea of a open GPU. > > I think the larger question is exactly what Intel is going to do with its > roadmap. > > Did any of you guys look at this article: > > http://www.techradar.com/us/news/computing-components/graphics-cards/intel-could-kill-performance-pc-graphics-in-2015-1089339 > > Given how slow the project is moving, I am wondering if we are chasing a > straw man here. > > If the GPU simply becomes part of the CPU and just as programmable, the > issues with ATI and Nvidia might be a mute point. > > Which would be fine with me, ATI and Nvidia deserve to burn in my opinion > because I consider open source one of the few redeeming qualities of human > pursuits in science and technology and I must say, on a daily basis I have > to deal with these two companies and it physically makes me nauseous. > > -gc > > > > > > > On 10/17/2012 06:23 PM, Troy Benjegerdes wrote: >> >> Let's use some critical thinking here, okay? >> >> First, if a graphics card is using more than 60W power at *idle*, >> it's going to turn into a puddle of molten slag under full load. >> >> Second, start thinking about who stands to *make money* here. Who's >> going to get a bonus (or a promotion) because of some silly limit >> like this? >> >> The 'agenda21' thing sounds like someone from a defense contractor >> wrote it, so they can sell more military equipment. But the funny >> thing is we have a competitive world market, and if AMD (or an >> up-and-coming Chinese chipmaker) figures out theres more money in >> 120W graphics cards, then that's what we'll have, and the EU can >> buy the slower limited versions and their players will get fragged >> more. >> >> >> On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 09:02:27AM -0500, Gregory Carter wrote: >>> >>> Welcome to Agenda 21. >>> >>> http://www.un.org/esa/dsd/agenda21/ >>> >>> It is a well known publication by the U.N. to de-industrialize the west. >>> >>> It's main goals are: >>> >>> 1) Stop or freeze/reduce the development of Urban centers. >>> 2) Reduce the use of technology in various areas in human >>> communities to prevent the spread of electrical consumption and >>> preserve woodland areas and water reserves. >>> 3) Reduce population through the application of genetically modified >>> foods, targeting high growth populations in Africa and other >>> undeveloped nations through the use of trade and GMO seed sales >>> controls. >>> >>> It not only means no GPU's in your future, it also means death for >>> billions. >>> >>> -gc >>> >>> On 10/15/2012 12:13 PM, Dieter BSD wrote: >>>> >>>> Why not limit power directly rather than limiting memory bandwidth? >>>> >>>> The US has a gas guzzler tax for cars that use a lot of fuel. >>>> But light bulbs and now GPUs get an outright ban? >>>> >>>> >>>> http://www.techpowerup.com/173706/New-EU-Energy-Guidelines-Could-Cripple-High-End-Graphics-Cards.html >>>> >>>> Hmmm, maybe the 1% think Big Bird is using too much energy? >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> Open-graphics mailing list >>>> [email protected] >>>> http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics >>>> List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com) >>>> >>>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Open-graphics mailing list >>> [email protected] >>> http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics >>> List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com) >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > Open-graphics mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics > List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com) -- Timothy Normand Miller, PhD http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/~millerti Open Graphics Project _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
