From fc1cc31bb979fab136b0b9e903b438eb463d110f Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: lkcl Date: Thu, 25 Mar 2021 14:55:06 +0000 Subject: [PATCH] --- openpower/ISA_WG/Board_letter_26mar2021.mdwn | 8 ++++++++ 1 file changed, 8 insertions(+) diff --git a/openpower/ISA_WG/Board_letter_26mar2021.mdwn b/openpower/ISA_WG/Board_letter_26mar2021.mdwn index bcfa3882a..6bbd16ed0 100644 --- a/openpower/ISA_WG/Board_letter_26mar2021.mdwn +++ b/openpower/ISA_WG/Board_letter_26mar2021.mdwn @@ -13,3 +13,11 @@ Dear OPF Board, As you know the LibreSOC team have been working for over 3 years on a massive conceptual upgrade to the OpenPOWER ISA, based on Cray-Style Vectors, which will modernise it for today's 3D and VPU workloads, with an incidental side-effect of upgrading it for future supercomputing needs. RISC-V has RVV, ARM has SVE2, x86 has AVX512, whilst OpenPOWER has an out-of-date SIMD ISA. It goes without saying that over the decades, SIMD has been demonstrated to be harmful. https://www.sigarch.org/simd-instructions-considered-harmful/ + +Normally, such huge ISA development efforts would be instigated, organised and funded through either Academia or an extremely large Corporation, or a Consortium combining multiple such entities. It is therefore without precedent across the Computing Industry for something of this magnitude of effort to come not only from a Libre background but from a Libre background that is funded by a Charitable Foundation with a mandate to fund "Works for the Public Good". + +From reading the PowerISA v3.0C sections we have learned and taken on board that a "Sandbox" opcode exists (EXT22) which is intended for "small private extensions" to the OpenPOWER ISA. Our Bitmanipulation Extension, needed for Audio/Video and cryptographic workloads, struggles to fit into that space, and we have not yet added Custom 3D opcodes or the IEEE754 Transcendentals (SIN, COS) + +In speaking with various people (Toshaan, Paul and Hugh) we have pieced together the way that the Op + + -- 2.30.2