Comments on: What Will AMD Do With Programmable Logic And Other Xilinx IP? https://www.nextplatform.com/2022/02/15/what-will-amd-do-with-programmable-logic-and-other-xilinx-ip/ In-depth coverage of high-end computing at large enterprises, supercomputing centers, hyperscale data centers, and public clouds. Wed, 23 Feb 2022 20:59:30 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.1 By: hoohoo https://www.nextplatform.com/2022/02/15/what-will-amd-do-with-programmable-logic-and-other-xilinx-ip/#comment-177716 Fri, 18 Feb 2022 03:31:53 +0000 https://www.nextplatform.com/?p=140025#comment-177716 I like your idea for what AMD should do. Not at all convinced that FPGAs will sell much but a flexible platform with socketed GPUs as well as CPUs and blazing fast socket to socket would sell. Time to have options other than PCIe for GPUs in commodity servers.

Do you think there will come a time when it will make sense for AMD to build fab(s) again? TSMC is great and all, but the bottleneck is getting narrower every year.

]]> By: Sharad Mehrotra https://www.nextplatform.com/2022/02/15/what-will-amd-do-with-programmable-logic-and-other-xilinx-ip/#comment-177629 Thu, 17 Feb 2022 18:02:27 +0000 https://www.nextplatform.com/?p=140025#comment-177629 Your last thought experiment is very intriguing, but I worry that the economic model for extending Infinity Fabric outside a chiplet-based socket or a single compute node may not be competitive with Ethernet economics or market momentum. That said, we are seeing all sorts of proprietary (usually optical) interconnects being implemented by the AI system companies and Google in their TPU clusters, so a case could be made for doing the same in this case.

]]> By: EC https://www.nextplatform.com/2022/02/15/what-will-amd-do-with-programmable-logic-and-other-xilinx-ip/#comment-177393 Wed, 16 Feb 2022 15:52:16 +0000 https://www.nextplatform.com/?p=140025#comment-177393 AMD’s ability to make a dent in the data center with products not CPU is not limited by hardware. Silicon and the way you connect the pieces is just half the problem. Both AMD and Intel are faced with the same issue, matching the vast library of software Nvidia has amassed.

]]> By: Targonis https://www.nextplatform.com/2022/02/15/what-will-amd-do-with-programmable-logic-and-other-xilinx-ip/#comment-177391 Wed, 16 Feb 2022 15:02:31 +0000 https://www.nextplatform.com/?p=140025#comment-177391 My own thought on this topic comes from the idea of what the CPU and GPU designers go through when trying to improve the IPC and chip designs to become more efficient due to architecture. Now, there are operations within the chips, those combinations of logic gates that lead to HOW instructions get executed that makes the purchase of Xilinx interesting. Picture if the use of a TINY bit of FPGA would make certain things go from needing 20 operations down to 3 operations. The performance increase would be huge from using that approach, assuming that is what will happen going forward. It’s not obvious stuff, but is the sort of, “under the hood” type of thing that has allowed AMD to increase the IPC of it’s processors significantly with Zen2 and Zen3, possibly with Zen4 and Zen5 once them come out as well.

My other feeling is that there may be some of those things that the combination of technologies will really change how some things are done. Intel has Altera, so could copy what AMD is coming up with, but that is also why AMD won’t say anything about it until is is almost ready to go. It might seem obvious once you see it, but it may also be a case of, “damn, that’s cool!” when we find out what it is, but wouldn’t be something obvious.

AMD has been fairly focused on making CPUs and GPUs better, and by staying focused, it has gone from being at risk of going bankrupt to where the company is today. That focus makes me feel that the Xilinx purchase came from one or more things that will benefit the CPU and/or GPU sides of the business, with all of this other stuff being a bonus for the overall business, but I don’t think was the primary goal. Lisa Su is not someone who takes her eyes off the ball.

]]> By: Colby https://www.nextplatform.com/2022/02/15/what-will-amd-do-with-programmable-logic-and-other-xilinx-ip/#comment-177242 Tue, 15 Feb 2022 16:58:29 +0000 https://www.nextplatform.com/?p=140025#comment-177242 So first of all I think more security focused components should be done in FPGAs as it would allow them to be fixed. This could help mitigate some hardware vulnerabilities. I am also hopeful that AMD/Xilinx can start selling a reasonable retrogaming FPGA add-in card to consumers. Either in a m.2 or PCIE. Modt people rely on emulators right now to play their older games but FPGAs allow actual hardware emulation and should make for a better experience.

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