-Many thanks to Michael Larabel as he has been writing early articles
-on this project before we had a chance to get this pre-launch stage
-up and running, he picked up on the first update
-[here](http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Quad-Core-Libre-SoC-Proposal). The first article covered a lot more of the
-[technical details](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Libre-GPU-RISC-V-Vulkan), and the second covered an announcement of
-[Kazan](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Kazan-Vulkan-Rust),
-which implements the Vulkan 3D API.
+Many thanks to Michael Larabel, who has been writing early articles on
+this project even before we had a chance to set up this pre-launch
+page. What follows are some of my observations and responses about the
+articles.
+
+#### List of Phoronix Articles
+
+For the last few months, Michael has been covering various aspects of
+this project. The first article covered a lot of the technical
+details, the second article covered an announcement of Kazan, which
+implements the Vulkan 3D API, and the most recent article picks up on
+[the first project
+update](why-make-a-quad-core-64-bit-soc-surely-there-are-enough-already):
+
+- [There's A New Libre GPU Effort Building On RISC-V, Rust, LLVM & Vulkan](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Libre-GPU-RISC-V-Vulkan) (posted 28 September 2018)
+- [The Kazan Vulkan CPU/Software-Based Implementation Being Rewritten In Rust](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Kazan-Vulkan-Rust) (posted 04 October 2018)
+- [The EOMA68 Libre Computer Developer Wants To Tackle A Quad-Core RISC-V Libre SoC Design](http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Quad-Core-Libre-SoC-Proposal) (posted 29 November 2018)
There has been quite a lot going on, including an enormous amount of
-planning for nearly six to eight months going on, so there are quite
+planning for nearly six to eight months, so there are quite
a few catch-up updates to write. It's worthwhile doing one that incorporates
responses to Michael and to some of the people who also kindly asked
questions and made comments on the
[Phoronix Forum](https://www.phoronix.com/forums/node/1064199).
-I have no illusions about the cost of development of this project: it's
-going to be somewhere north of USD $6 million, with contingency of up
-to USD $10 million. This is just how it is. What that means is,
-interestingly, it means that there's provision for both investment and
-also to attract really, really good talent, and to properly pay for it.
-Where the project has started from is what can be achieved with the
-current resources. I've been kindly sponsored with a ZC706 FPGA board
-(worth over USD $2,500), which will allow one major hurdle to be cleared
-that will meet the criteria of many investors: making sure that the
-design is FPGA proven.
-
-Secondly, Michael, I note some incredulity at the goal of meeting the
-target of mobile-class 3D performance. It's actually extremely modest:
-100 million pixels per second, 30 million triangles per second, and around
+#### Comments and Responses
+
+I have no illusions about the cost of development of this project:
+it's going to be somewhere north of USD $6 million, with contingency
+of up to USD $10 million. This is just how it is. Interestingly,
+that means there's provision for both attracting investment and
+really, really good talent, and to properly pay for that talent. The
+project's origins reflect what can be achieved with the current
+resources. I've been kindly sponsored with a ZC706 FPGA board (worth
+over USD $2,500), which will allow one major hurdle to be cleared that
+will meet the criteria of many investors: making sure the design is
+FPGA proven.
+
+Secondly, I note Michael is a bit incredulous of the goal of achieving
+mobile-class 3D performance. It's actually extremely modest: 100
+million pixels per second, 30 million triangles per second, and around
5 to 6 GFLOPs. These statistics were taken from the benchmarks for
-Vivante's GC800. Achieving these kinds of numbers is dead easy. Achieving
-them within a power envelope of under 2.5 watts? Not so easy!
+Vivante's GC800. Achieving these kind of numbers is dead easy.
+Achieving them within a power envelope of under 2.5 watts? Not so
+easy!
-So here, what I did was, spend a considerable amount of time speaking to
-Jeff Bush, who developed
+To that end, I spent a considerable amount of time speaking to Jeff
+Bush, who developed
[Nyuzi](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=LGPL-GPGPU-NyuziProcessor).
-Jeff's work is fascinating and extremely valuable because despite it being
-such low 3D peformance, the technical documentation and academic analysis
-of *why* that performance is so low is absolutely, absolutely critical.
-The [paper](http://www.cs.binghamton.edu/~millerti/nyuziraster.pdf) that
-Jeff co-authored makes a comparison of software and hardware rasterisation,
-and he actually developed a fixed-function hardware renderer called
-[ChiselGPU](https://github.com/jbush001/ChiselGPU) in order to do
-comparisons.
+Jeff's work is fascinating and extremely valuable because, despite it
+being such low 3D peformance, the technical documentation and academic
+analysis of *why* that performance is so low is absolutely, absolutely
+critical. The
+[paper](http://www.cs.binghamton.edu/~millerti/nyuziraster.pdf) that
+Jeff co-authored makes a comparison of software and hardware
+rasterisation, and he actually developed a fixed-function hardware
+renderer called [ChiselGPU](https://github.com/jbush001/ChiselGPU) in
+order to do the comparisons.
One fascinating insight that came out of Jeff's work was that just getting
data through the L1/L2 cache has a massive impact on power consumption.
A way to deal with that is to increase the number of registers in the
-design until such time as the data being processed (a tile for example,
-or an inter-dependent 4-wide bank of 4x3 Floating-point numbers) can
+design until such time as the data being processed (for example, a tile,
+or an inter-dependent four-wide bank of 4x3 floating-point numbers) can
all fit into the register file, so as not to need to be pushed back down
to the L1 cache and back. Some GPUs have a "scratch RAM" area to deal
with this. Staggeringly, even for (or, especially for) a mobile-class
GPU, we had to increase the register file size to a whopping 128 64-bit
entries, that can be broken down into **256** 32-bit single-precision
-floating-point entries! What are we *doing*! This is supposed to be
+floating-point entries! What are we *doing*?! This is supposed to be
a modest design!
-A little digging around the Internet reveals that even mobile-class GPUs
-genuinely have this number of registers. More than that, though, it
-turns out that we may have a hidden advantage through implementing
-Kazan as a Vulkan Driver. In this
-[discussion](http://lists.libre-riscv.org/pipermail/libre-riscv-dev/2018-October/000065.html)
+A little digging around the Internet reveals that even mobile-class
+GPUs genuinely have this number of registers. More than that, though,
+it turns out that we may have a hidden advantage through implementing
+Kazan as a Vulkan Driver. In [this mailing list
+discussion](http://lists.libre-riscv.org/pipermail/libre-riscv-dev/2018-October/000065.html)
which follows on from a proposal on the LLVM mailing list about making
-Matrices a first-class type, Jacob informed me that the Vulkan API also
-passes in large batches of data that contains Matrices, and also arrays of
-data structures that need to be processed together. The problem here
-is that you want the elements of the arrays (or the Matrix) to be
-processed as if they were linear, preferably without having to move
-them around. Matrix multiplication for example typically requires the
-2nd matrix to be transposed (X swapped with Y) in order to access the
-elements in a linear fashion. What we decided to do instead was to
-add [1D/2D/3D data shaping](http://lists.libre-riscv.org/pipermail/libre-riscv-dev/2018-October/000087.html). The elements *stay in-place* in the
-original registers, however a "remapper" engine makes them appear,
-as far as the parallel (SIMD/Vector) engine is concerned, as if the
-registers are contiguous. Register numbers 0 1 2 3 / 4 5 6 7 / 8 9 10 11
-get "remapped" to 0 4 8 / 1 5 9 / 2 6 10 / 3 7 11 without the need
-for "MV" instructions. Thanks to Mitch Alsup, the designer of the
-66000 ISA, we learned that this re-invented wheel has
-[also been implemented](https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.arch/bGBeaNjAKvc/_vbqyxTUAQAJ)
-in production GPUs and Vectorisation Systems.
-
-The point is that by picking Vulkan, and implementing both the hardware
+matrices a first-class type, Jacob informed me that the Vulkan API
+also passes in large batches of data that contain matrices, and also
+arrays of data structures that need to be processed together. The
+problem here is that you want the elements of the arrays (or the
+matrix) to be processed as if they were linear, preferably without
+having to move them around. Matrix multiplication, for example,
+typically requires the second matrix to be transposed (X swapped with
+Y) in order to access the elements in a linear fashion. What we
+decided to do instead was to add [1D/2D/3D data
+shaping](http://lists.libre-riscv.org/pipermail/libre-riscv-dev/2018-October/000087.html).
+The elements *stay in-place* in the original registers, however a
+"remapper" engine makes them appear, as far as the parallel
+(SIMD/Vector) engine is concerned, as if the registers are contiguous.
+In the case of transposing, register numbers 0 1 2 3 / 4 5 6 7 / 8 9
+10 11 get "remapped" to 0 4 8 / 1 5 9 / 2 6 10 / 3 7 11 without the
+need for "MV" instructions. Thanks to Mitch Alsup, the designer of
+the 66000 ISA, we learned that this re-invented wheel has [also been
+implemented](https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.arch/bGBeaNjAKvc/_vbqyxTUAQAJ)
+in production GPUs and vectorisation systems.
+
+The point is, that by picking Vulkan and implementing both the hardware
design and the software at the same time, we are both constrained
*and guided* towards a successful design. In addition, as we know from
-previous successful (truly) open projects, the very fact that you are
+previous successful (truly) open projects, the very fact you are
at liberty to talk about what you're doing (as compared to a secretive
proprietary company) means that people with specialist expertise are
more than happy to come forward and comment, and help guide you away
The project thus becomes a *synthesis of the expertise and efforts
of much more than just the people who are implementing it*.
-Just having the opportunity to do that is extremely humbling. Mitch Alsup,
-the designer of the famous Motorola 68000 series of processors,
-is giving us some feedback and input! Like... wow! For example,
-he made an extremely valuable recommendation
-[here](https://libre-riscv.org/3d_gpu/microarchitecture/) on how
-to save on register file space, only needing 1R1W (1x read-port,
-1x write-port) SRAM, by stretching out the pipeline phases to
-load operands sequentially rather than in parallel. I cannot express
-how grateful I am for his input, and for all the other people who
-have helped.
-
-So I believe we're in good hands, here. Ultimately, what is being
-presented here is more of an opportunity for anyone who has wanted
-something like this to succeed (or even exist), empowering them to
-go from "I wish someone would do this" to "I can help make it happen".
-This is one of the reasons why, if i am honest, I get slightly aggravated
-by people who write, "oh this project could not possibly succeed"
-or "this person could not possibly achieve this goal" as such comments
-entirely miss the point.
-
-As this update is quite long, I'll answer more on the Phoronix
-[comments](https://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/phoronix/latest-phoronix-articles/1064199-the-eoma68-libre-computer-developer-wants-to-tackle-a-quad-core-risc-v-libre-soc-design)
-however I particularly wanted to address one comment, here:
-*"This religious war target seems to be way off based on skill-set."*.
+Just having the opportunity to do that is extremely humbling. Mitch
+Alsup, the designer of the famous Motorola 68000 series of processors,
+is giving us some feedback and input! Like... wow! For example, [he
+made an extremely valuable
+recommendation](https://libre-riscv.org/3d_gpu/microarchitecture/) on
+how to save on register file space, only needing 1R1W (1 x read-port,
+1 x write-port) SRAM, by stretching out the pipeline phases to load
+operands sequentially rather than in parallel. I cannot express how
+grateful I am for his input, and for all the other people who have
+helped.
+
+So, given this community, I believe we're in good hands. Ultimately,
+what is being presented here is more of an opportunity for anyone who
+has wanted something like this to succeed (or even exist), empowering
+them to go from "I wish someone would do this" to "I can help make it
+happen." This is one of the reasons why, if I am honest, I get
+slightly aggravated by people who write, "oh this project could not
+possibly succeed" or "this person could not possibly achieve this
+goal," as such comments entirely miss the point.
+
+As this update is quite long, I'll answer more on the [Phoronix
+comments](https://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/phoronix/latest-phoronix-articles/1064199-the-eoma68-libre-computer-developer-wants-to-tackle-a-quad-core-risc-v-libre-soc-design),
+however, I particularly wanted to address one comment, here:
+*"This religious war target seems to be way off based on skill set."*.
As you can see above, I believe that one aspect of that comment has
been addressed, above: as it's a libre project, unlike a proprietary
company we're at liberty to get out on the Internet and ask peoples'
-advice before committing even to a design.
+advice before even committing to a design.
-The second aspect is the very silly "Religious War" implication. It's
+The second aspect is the very silly "religious war" implication. It's
absolutely nothing of the kind. What many people do not know about me
-is that I pick projects that nobody else is doing, very very deliberately.
+is that I very, very deliberately pick projects that nobody else is doing.
I pick projects that make an ethical difference. That, if successful,
many peoples' lives would be much better, less painful. It has absolutely
-sod-all to do with "Religious frothing fervour" (foam, foam).
+sod-all to do with "religious frothing fervour" (foam, foam).
Many companies choose to make ethical compromises in order to make a profit.
People are finally beginning to wake up to the consequences of this kind
of concentration of financial and informational power. In India,
people have been *murdered* based on Whatsapp viral hear-say. In the USA,
-democratic elections have been interfered with (Cambridge Analytica).
-I could very easily go to any of these massively-unethical Corporations,
+democratic elections have been interfered with (e.g., Cambridge Analytica).
+I could very easily go to any of these massively-unethical corporations,
and make an absolute fortune in the process of empowering them to do a
-hundred more Cambridge Analyticas. *I choose not to do so*.
+hundred more Cambridge Analyticas. *I choose not to do so.*
-So there are plenty of companies that make decisions without
+There are plenty of companies that make decisions without
a moral compass, because, financially, it is easier to do so. And, more
poignantly, it is legally permissible and *actively encouraged* by
-legal frameworks, tax incentives and Government-sanction monopolies
-known by the name "patents".
+legal frameworks, tax incentives, and Government-sanction monopolies
+known by the name "patents."
What I am doing here is to demonstrate that none of that is necessary.
That it is possible to design - and get funding for - a desirable
product that happens also to be ethical. This is why the goal is
as it is: a mobile-class processor, because that's the kind of product
that could sell in large volumes at around the USD $4 mark.
-You won't see any Corporation taking on such a goal, as they're required
-to prioritise profits over ethics. So it's down to you,
+You won't see any corporation taking on such a goal, as they're required
+to prioritise profits over ethics. So, it's down to you,
if you want this project to succeed, to help make it happen.
-
projects / crowdsupply.git / commitdiff