Texas Instruments Puts ARM-DSP Processors Into Play for HPC

By Michael Feldman

November 20, 2012

NVIDIA, Intel and AMD were not the only chip vendors unveiling new HPC accelerators last week SC12. Texas Instruments (TI) announced a set of heterogeneous processors that they believe will offer among the best performance per watt in the industry. In this case, the chipmaker glued an ARM CPU and digital signal processor (DSP) together on the same die, offering a low-power SoC with an impressive number of FLOPS.

This represents TI’s second attempt to push a wedge into the high performance computing space. The company made its initial foray into the market in October 2011 when it introduced its multicore Keystone DSPs (TMS320C66x). The primary destination of those chips was 4G cellular base stations and radio network controllers, but since floating point functionality had to be added to serve that market, TI felt the same silicon could double as HPC accelerators.

One of the problems with the standalone DSP devices being used for HPC was that the application kernels had to be offloaded from a CPU host to the DSP. That wasn’t because the DSPs couldn’t run a whole application (the DSP is closer to a manycore CPU than a GPU), but because there was no Linux OS or MPI library ports for the architecture. ARM, though, had support for both of these pieces of software, allowing developers to use a traditional driver-accelerator model.

There are actually six new SoCs being introduced by TI, two of which are ARM-only (no DSP integration) that are aimed at powering routers, switches, wireless appliances, and other networking devices. The four remaining parts are the ARM-DSP heterogenous chips. These heterogeneous chips are fully tricked-out SoCs, with an ARM Cortex A15 CPU, a Keystone DSP, a shared memory controller, an integrated fabric and an I/O interface. The fabric itself is a custom design from TI, known as TeraNet, which delivers a low latency, multi-terabit/second fabric that connects the ARM CPU, DSP and memory controller.

Of the four heterogeneous, two are high-end parts – the 66AK2H06 and 66AK2H12 – targeted to high performance computing, as well as media processing, video analytics, gaming, VDI, and radar. The 66AK2H12 4-core ARM/8-core DSP is the more powerful of the two. It offers 198 gigaflops of single precision (SP) floating point performance or 70 gigaflops in double precision. That includes the DSP floating point as well as the Neon FP unit in the ARM CPU.

Although, this ARM-DSP SoC represents only about half the FLOPS of a high-end x86 CPU, the TI chip delivers this in about one-tenth the power – 13 to 14 watts. For single precision, that works out to about 16 SP gigaflops per watt, which is about the same as last year’s stand-alone 8-core DSP chip, sans CPU. It’s also nearly as good as latest NVIDIA’s K10 Tesla part, which delivers about 20 SP gigaflops per watt.

Since the ARM CPU is 32-bit architecture, memory reach for these chips is limited. In fact, each SoC can only access up to 16 GB – not much compared to standard x86 CPU, but about twice as much as a traditional accelerator. The hetero chips, though, don’t need an external CPU to feed it, as the K10 does; the on-chip ARM serves as the host driver. This eliminates the PCIe communication overhead of a CPU hooked to an discrete accelerator.

And since the ARM and DSP units share some of the same memory, it can at least potentially simplify programming of these devices. In that sense, it’s closer to AMD’s Fusion (or APU) architecture, which glues an x86 CPU and GPU onto the same die. At this point though, the AMD offerings are being targeted for client devices, such as laptops, rather than servers.

TI is actually not making so much of a distinction in where their chips will end up. According to Arnon Friedmann, TI’s business manager for the multicore processors unit, the same SoCs targeted for servers could also be applied to embedded devices. For example, a sensor network of cameras doing video surveillance could use an ARM-DSP chip to do some local image processing; the output of which could then be shunted to a server farm of these same chips to perform deeper analytics on the pre-processed video.

“That’s a level of scalability that we think our devices bring, which others in HPC don’t offer today,” Friedmann told HPCwire. “So if you look at NVIDIA [GPUs] and Intel MIC, there really aren’t cut-down versions of these really high performance devices and they’re not quite as geared for embedded as we are.”

For HPC-type developers, TI offers both OpenMP and MPI. The chipmaker also has an alpha version of OpenCL that supports an ARM CPU that can work in conjunction with the on-chip DSP. Down the road, TI is looking to support the newly hatched OpenMP accelerator directives, which are expected to be officially codified in the standard sometime next year.

As with the other accelerators from NVIDIA, Intel and AMD vying for HPC business, the success of the TI parts will depend upon how easy they are to program and how much application performance ensues. Regarding the latter, there is already some encouraging news. According to Friedmann, an FFT kernel from an aperture radar code produced performance on par with that of a GPU, but when they moved the entire application to the chip, performance was boosted 8-fold. Friedmann says interested parties are looking to do similar ports for even larger applications.

Right now, the chipmaker is trying to bring in more HPC users to move their MPI codes over to their ARM-DSP SoCs in order to drum up interest from server makers to build hardware. In the meantime, for do-it-yourselfers, TI’s two SoCs aimed at HPC are available for sampling now. Broader availability is expected in the first quarter of 2013, with general availability of evaluation modules coming in the second quarter.

Subscribe to HPCwire's Weekly Update!

Be the most informed person in the room! Stay ahead of the tech trends with industry updates delivered to you every week!

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing power it brings to artificial intelligence.  Nvidia's DGX Read more…

Call for Participation in Workshop on Potential NSF CISE Quantum Initiative

March 26, 2024

Editor’s Note: Next month there will be a workshop to discuss what a quantum initiative led by NSF’s Computer, Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate could entail. The details are posted below in a Ca Read more…

Waseda U. Researchers Reports New Quantum Algorithm for Speeding Optimization

March 25, 2024

Optimization problems cover a wide range of applications and are often cited as good candidates for quantum computing. However, the execution time for constrained combinatorial optimization applications on quantum device Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at the network layer threatens to make bigger and brawnier pro Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HBM3E memory as well as the the ability to train 1 trillion pa Read more…

Nvidia Appoints Andy Grant as EMEA Director of Supercomputing, Higher Education, and AI

March 22, 2024

Nvidia recently appointed Andy Grant as Director, Supercomputing, Higher Education, and AI for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA). With over 25 years of high-performance computing (HPC) experience, Grant brings a Read more…

Q&A with Nvidia’s Chief of DGX Systems on the DGX-GB200 Rack-scale System

March 27, 2024

Pictures of Nvidia's new flagship mega-server, the DGX GB200, on the GTC show floor got favorable reactions on social media for the sheer amount of computing po Read more…

NVLink: Faster Interconnects and Switches to Help Relieve Data Bottlenecks

March 25, 2024

Nvidia’s new Blackwell architecture may have stolen the show this week at the GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, California. But an emerging bottleneck at Read more…

Who is David Blackwell?

March 22, 2024

During GTC24, co-founder and president of NVIDIA Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell GPU. This GPU itself is heavily optimized for AI work, boasting 192GB of HB Read more…

Nvidia Looks to Accelerate GenAI Adoption with NIM

March 19, 2024

Today at the GPU Technology Conference, Nvidia launched a new offering aimed at helping customers quickly deploy their generative AI applications in a secure, s Read more…

The Generative AI Future Is Now, Nvidia’s Huang Says

March 19, 2024

We are in the early days of a transformative shift in how business gets done thanks to the advent of generative AI, according to Nvidia CEO and cofounder Jensen Read more…

Nvidia’s New Blackwell GPU Can Train AI Models with Trillions of Parameters

March 18, 2024

Nvidia's latest and fastest GPU, codenamed Blackwell, is here and will underpin the company's AI plans this year. The chip offers performance improvements from Read more…

Nvidia Showcases Quantum Cloud, Expanding Quantum Portfolio at GTC24

March 18, 2024

Nvidia’s barrage of quantum news at GTC24 this week includes new products, signature collaborations, and a new Nvidia Quantum Cloud for quantum developers. Wh Read more…

Houston We Have a Solution: Addressing the HPC and Tech Talent Gap

March 15, 2024

Generations of Houstonian teachers, counselors, and parents have either worked in the aerospace industry or know people who do - the prospect of entering the fi Read more…

Alibaba Shuts Down its Quantum Computing Effort

November 30, 2023

In case you missed it, China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba has shut down its quantum computing research effort. It’s not entirely clear what drove the change. Read more…

Nvidia H100: Are 550,000 GPUs Enough for This Year?

August 17, 2023

The GPU Squeeze continues to place a premium on Nvidia H100 GPUs. In a recent Financial Times article, Nvidia reports that it expects to ship 550,000 of its lat Read more…

Shutterstock 1285747942

AMD’s Horsepower-packed MI300X GPU Beats Nvidia’s Upcoming H200

December 7, 2023

AMD and Nvidia are locked in an AI performance battle – much like the gaming GPU performance clash the companies have waged for decades. AMD has claimed it Read more…

DoD Takes a Long View of Quantum Computing

December 19, 2023

Given the large sums tied to expensive weapon systems – think $100-million-plus per F-35 fighter – it’s easy to forget the U.S. Department of Defense is a Read more…

Synopsys Eats Ansys: Does HPC Get Indigestion?

February 8, 2024

Recently, it was announced that Synopsys is buying HPC tool developer Ansys. Started in Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1970 as Swanson Analysis Systems, Inc. (SASI) by John Swanson (and eventually renamed), Ansys serves the CAE (Computer Aided Engineering)/multiphysics engineering simulation market. Read more…

Choosing the Right GPU for LLM Inference and Training

December 11, 2023

Accelerating the training and inference processes of deep learning models is crucial for unleashing their true potential and NVIDIA GPUs have emerged as a game- Read more…

Intel’s Server and PC Chip Development Will Blur After 2025

January 15, 2024

Intel's dealing with much more than chip rivals breathing down its neck; it is simultaneously integrating a bevy of new technologies such as chiplets, artificia Read more…

Baidu Exits Quantum, Closely Following Alibaba’s Earlier Move

January 5, 2024

Reuters reported this week that Baidu, China’s giant e-commerce and services provider, is exiting the quantum computing development arena. Reuters reported � Read more…

Leading Solution Providers

Contributors

Comparing NVIDIA A100 and NVIDIA L40S: Which GPU is Ideal for AI and Graphics-Intensive Workloads?

October 30, 2023

With long lead times for the NVIDIA H100 and A100 GPUs, many organizations are looking at the new NVIDIA L40S GPU, which it’s a new GPU optimized for AI and g Read more…

Shutterstock 1179408610

Google Addresses the Mysteries of Its Hypercomputer 

December 28, 2023

When Google launched its Hypercomputer earlier this month (December 2023), the first reaction was, "Say what?" It turns out that the Hypercomputer is Google's t Read more…

AMD MI3000A

How AMD May Get Across the CUDA Moat

October 5, 2023

When discussing GenAI, the term "GPU" almost always enters the conversation and the topic often moves toward performance and access. Interestingly, the word "GPU" is assumed to mean "Nvidia" products. (As an aside, the popular Nvidia hardware used in GenAI are not technically... Read more…

Shutterstock 1606064203

Meta’s Zuckerberg Puts Its AI Future in the Hands of 600,000 GPUs

January 25, 2024

In under two minutes, Meta's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, laid out the company's AI plans, which included a plan to build an artificial intelligence system with the eq Read more…

Google Introduces ‘Hypercomputer’ to Its AI Infrastructure

December 11, 2023

Google ran out of monikers to describe its new AI system released on December 7. Supercomputer perhaps wasn't an apt description, so it settled on Hypercomputer Read more…

China Is All In on a RISC-V Future

January 8, 2024

The state of RISC-V in China was discussed in a recent report released by the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The report, entitled "E Read more…

Intel Won’t Have a Xeon Max Chip with New Emerald Rapids CPU

December 14, 2023

As expected, Intel officially announced its 5th generation Xeon server chips codenamed Emerald Rapids at an event in New York City, where the focus was really o Read more…

IBM Quantum Summit: Two New QPUs, Upgraded Qiskit, 10-year Roadmap and More

December 4, 2023

IBM kicks off its annual Quantum Summit today and will announce a broad range of advances including its much-anticipated 1121-qubit Condor QPU, a smaller 133-qu Read more…

  • arrow
  • Click Here for More Headlines
  • arrow
HPCwire