[HN Gopher] VeriGPU: GPU in Verilog loosely based on RISC-V ISA
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       VeriGPU: GPU in Verilog loosely based on RISC-V ISA
        
       Author : btdmaster
       Score  : 67 points
       Date   : 2022-04-23 17:10 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | lizardactivist wrote:
       | Very cool, but can someone remind me what "GPU" means again?
        
         | Frenchgeek wrote:
         | Generic Processing Unit, it seems.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
       | > Internal GPU Core ISA loosely compliant with RISC-V ISA. Where
       | RISC-V conflicts with designing for a GPU setting, we break with
       | RISC-V.
       | 
       | Very amateur question: I thought RISC-V added vector extensions
       | so you could use it directly for GPU/TPU chips without having to
       | fragment the ecosystem?
        
         | colejohnson66 wrote:
         | The V extension is more akin to the various SIMD extensions of
         | x86 (SSE/AVX) or ARM (NEON) than a GPU system. I'm sure one
         | could make a GPU based on RV-V, but the extension is more GPGPU
         | like than a pixel/shader pipeline.
        
       | Sirened wrote:
       | Neat! Looks like it's very much in its early stages (no
       | concurrent execution/threads yet) but it's so great to see FOSS
       | digital design work in an industry dominated by huge players
        
       | gnufx wrote:
       | Perhaps also see the (OpenPOWER-based) Libre-SOC effort
       | https://libre-soc.org/
        
       | tux3 wrote:
       | Worth noting this is targeting ML applications, so I don't think
       | you'll be able to display even a text console with it for the
       | foreseeable future.
       | 
       | But I love that this is even in the realm of possibilities!
       | There's no reason we couldn't, in principle, have a small open-
       | source GPU taping out on the free Skywater shuttle, and I am here
       | for it!
        
         | milkey_mouse wrote:
         | It's funny that we've gotten to the point that a "graphics-less
         | GPU" is actually useful. Perhaps they should call it something
         | else...
        
           | zmgsabst wrote:
           | Like a "tensor processing unit" or TPU?
           | 
           | A RISC-V open source TPU would be a big innovation in AI and
           | scientific computing.
        
             | petrohi wrote:
             | We work on an open source tensor processing unit at
             | https://tensil.ai. It is not RISC-V based since only a
             | handful of very simple instructions is needed for
             | expressing data flows typical in ML.
        
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       (page generated 2022-04-23 23:00 UTC)