{"id":4417,"date":"2018-09-19T18:18:07","date_gmt":"2018-09-19T18:18:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/athis-consulting.com\/news\/?p=4417"},"modified":"2018-10-02T10:28:24","modified_gmt":"2018-10-02T10:28:24","slug":"david-patterson-says-its-time-for-new-computer-architectures-and-software-languages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/athis-technologies.com\/news\/innovation\/2018\/david-patterson-says-its-time-for-new-computer-architectures-and-software-languages\/","title":{"rendered":"David Patterson Says It\u2019s Time for New Computer Architectures and Software Languages"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\"\"David Patterson\u2014University of California professor, Google engineer, and\u00a0RISC pioneer<\/a>\u2014says there\u2019s no better time than now to be a computer architect.That\u2019s because Moore\u2019s Law really is over, he says: \u201cWe are now a factor of 15 behind where we should be if Moore\u2019s Law were still operative. We are in the post\u2013Moore\u2019s Law era.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0This means, Patterson told engineers attending the\u00a02018 @Scale Conference<\/a> held in San Jose last week, that \u201cwe\u2019re at the end of the performance scaling that we are used to. When performance doubled every 18 months, people would throw out their desktop computers that were working fine because a friend\u2019s new computer was so much faster.\u201d<\/p>\n

But last year, he said, \u201csingle program performance only grew 3 percent, so it\u2019s doubling every 20 years. If you are just sitting there waiting for chips to get faster, you are going to have to wait a long time.\u201d<\/p>\n

For a computer architect like Patterson, this is actually good news. It\u2019s also good news for innovative software engineers, he pointed out. \u201cRevolutionary new hardware architectures and new software languages, tailored to dealing with specific kinds of computing problems, are just waiting to be developed,\u201d he said. \u201cThere are Turing Awards waiting to be picked up if people would just work on these things.\u201d<\/p>\n

As an example on the software side, Patterson indicated that rewriting Python into C gets you a 50x\u00a0speedup in performance. Add in various optimization techniques\u00a0and the speedup increases dramatically. It wouldn\u2019t be too much of a stretch, he indicated, \u201cto make an improvement of a factor of 1,000 in Python.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the hardware front, Patterson thinks domain-specific architectures just run better, saying, \u201cIt\u2019s not magic\u2014there are just things we can do.\u201d For example, applications don\u2019t all require that computing be done at the same level of accuracy. For some, he said, you could use lower-precision floating-point arithmetic instead of the commonly used\u00a0IEEE 754<\/a>\u00a0standard.<\/p>\n

The biggest area of opportunity right now for applying such new architectures and languages is machine learning, Patterson said. \u201cIf you are a hardware person,\u201d he said, \u201cyou want friends who desperately need more computers.\u201d And machine learning is \u201cravenous for computing, which we just love.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, he said, there\u2019s a vigorous debate surrounding which type of computer architecture is best for machine learning, with many companies placing their bets. Google has its\u00a0Tensor Processing Unit (TPU)<\/a>, with one core per chip and software-controlled memory instead of caches;\u00a0Nvidia<\/a>\u2019s GPU has 80-plus cores; and Microsoft is taking an FPGA approach.<\/p>\n

And\u00a0Intel<\/a>, he said, \u201cis trying to make all the bets,\u201d marketing traditional CPUs for machine learning,\u00a0purchasing Altera<\/a>\u00a0(the company that provides FPGAs to Microsoft), and\u00a0buying Nervana<\/a>, with its specialized neural-network processor (similar in approach to Google\u2019s TPU).<\/p>\n

Along with these major companies offering different architectures for machine learning, Patterson says there are at least 45 hardware startups tackling the problem. Ultimately, he said, the market will decide.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis,\u201d he says, \u201cis a golden age for computer architecture.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Patterson\u2014University of California professor, Google engineer, and\u00a0RISC pioneer\u2014says there\u2019s no better time than now to be a computer architect.That\u2019s because Moore\u2019s Law really is over, he says: \u201cWe are now a factor of 15 behind where we should be if Moore\u2019s Law were still operative. We are in the post\u2013Moore\u2019s Law era.\u201d \u00a0This means, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":4418,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"amp_status":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[241,350],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\nDavid Patterson Says It\u2019s Time for New Computer Architectures and Software Languages - AthisNews<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/athis-technologies.com\/news\/innovation\/2018\/david-patterson-says-its-time-for-new-computer-architectures-and-software-languages\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"David Patterson Says It\u2019s Time for New Computer Architectures and Software Languages - AthisNews\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"David Patterson\u2014University of California professor, Google engineer, and\u00a0RISC pioneer\u2014says there\u2019s no better time than now to be a computer architect.That\u2019s because Moore\u2019s Law really is over, he says: \u201cWe are now a factor of 15 behind where we should be if Moore\u2019s Law were still operative. We are in the post\u2013Moore\u2019s Law era.\u201d \u00a0This means, […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/athis-technologies.com\/news\/innovation\/2018\/david-patterson-says-its-time-for-new-computer-architectures-and-software-languages\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"AthisNews\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/AthisNews-271175647014395\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-09-19T18:18:07+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2018-10-02T10:28:24+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/athis-technologies.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/servers-1024x683.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"683\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mickael Madjour\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@https:\/\/twitter.com\/MMickael82\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@Athis_News\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Mickael Madjour\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/athis-technologies.com\/news\/innovation\/2018\/david-patterson-says-its-time-for-new-computer-architectures-and-software-languages\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/athis-technologies.com\/news\/innovation\/2018\/david-patterson-says-its-time-for-new-computer-architectures-and-software-languages\/\",\"name\":\"David Patterson Says It\u2019s Time for New Computer Architectures and Software Languages - AthisNews\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/athis-technologies.com\/news\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/athis-technologies.com\/news\/innovation\/2018\/david-patterson-says-its-time-for-new-computer-architectures-and-software-languages\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/athis-technologies.com\/news\/innovation\/2018\/david-patterson-says-its-time-for-new-computer-architectures-and-software-languages\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/athis-technologies.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/servers.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2018-09-19T18:18:07+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2018-10-02T10:28:24+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/athis-technologies.com\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/4e336579b063b8819b1c5bee603430a8\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/athis-technologies.com\/news\/innovation\/2018\/david-patterson-says-its-time-for-new-computer-architectures-and-software-languages\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/athis-technologies.com\/news\/innovation\/2018\/david-patterson-says-its-time-for-new-computer-architectures-and-software-languages\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/athis-technologies.com\/news\/innovation\/2018\/david-patterson-says-its-time-for-new-computer-architectures-and-software-languages\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/athis-technologies.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/servers.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/athis-technologies.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/servers.jpg\",\"width\":2121,\"height\":1414,\"caption\":\"Server room in data center. 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