From: "Andy "Krazy" Glew" on
Skybuck Flying wrote:
> After spending 6 months on opengl and cg shaders and still not being done...
> I am starting to wonder if I simply have to buy a different kind of hardware
> system to do fast redcode/corewar simulations ;) :) I also inspected cuda...
> but it's dirty little secret seems to be that some of it will be executed on
> the cpu which sucks.
>
> What I want is zillions of little cpu's which will fire memory requests at
> the memory... and while the wait for the memory they go do something else
> and fire some more memory requests at the memory...
>
> According to wikipedia and some other articles, the ultrasparc processors
> seem best / "engineered" for this:

If you want THOUSANDS of little CPUs, and the CPUs have convergent control flow, then you are probably better off with a
GPU. Whether ATI, Nvidia, Intel integrated, or even Imagine / PowerVR, depends.

If, however, you do not have converged control flow, then *maybe* a SPARC Niagara family. You'll get an order of
magnitude fewer processors (not THOUSANDS, just tens or hundreds). But they won't be quite as fragile, if control flow
diverges.

Note, though: you want a Niagara family. Not an UltraSPARC 2. The main-line SPARCs are just big fast CPUs like Intel
and AMD CPUs.


> So maybe it's time I venture into something else for a change... and see if
> that brings me more luck then the PC when it comes to this kinda of high
> performing multi threading ;) :)

Heck, guy, if you're serious about this, buy an FPGA development kit and build your own CPU.
From: "Andy "Krazy" Glew" on
Skybuck Flying wrote:
> Yeah the (ultra sparc) nigeria falls 1 and 2 also called T1 and T2 ;)
>
> (According to the web... long time ago a computer called "cyber" (cyberdyne
> ?:);)) did the same... now these new chips are called T1 and T2 lol..
> (terminator 1 and 2) ? ;) :))
>
>> Heck, guy, if you're serious about this, buy an FPGA development kit and
>> build your own CPU.
>
> I thought about that...
>
> But a CPU is not enough... I/it would also need RAM ?!
>
> How to solve that ?
>
> Can FPGA also function as RAM ?!?

Yes, but that would be silly.

Plug your FPGA CPU into conventional DRAM.

>
> Something like many hundreds of megabytes probably required...
>
> The FPGA's I have seen so far only have a few megabytes ?
> (I haven't looked that much ;) :))
>
> And then some form of input to load stuff into the ram... ;)
>
> Network card ?

Exactly.

Take a conventional PC.

With PCI or PCIe slots.

Build (or buy) PCI or PCIe cards as full of FPGAs and RAM as you care.