[erlang-questions] Erlang and Larrabee CPU

G.S. corticalcomputer@REDACTED
Sun Apr 5 00:54:02 CEST 2009


Those are good points Tim, I've also came over the following while reading
up on Larrabee:

"A different version of Larrabee might sit in motherboard CPU sockets using
QuickPath <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_QuickPath_Interconnect><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larrabee_%28GPU%29#cite_note-9>,
but Intel has not yet announced plans for this"

The following article
http://arstechnica.com/hardware/news/2007/06/clearing-up-the-confusion-over-intels-larrabee-part-ii.ars
also aludes to the possible future works of something like larrabee running
directly in a CPU socket. By the way, at the end the mentioned "Gesher" cpu
is currently known as "Sandy Bridges" (6-8 core, should be released this or
next year).

In any case, I just think that Erlang has a lot of potential for some
hardcore computing (I primarily use it for computationally intensive
projects on quad cores, and it's been working very well), and that we have
not yet utilized Tesla and similar potential "processing force multipliers"
is sad since Erlang can really scale on those easier than other languages.

On Sat, Apr 4, 2009 at 3:23 PM, Timothy Baldridge <tbaldridge@REDACTED>wrote:

> Right, although at launch, the Larrabee will be unable to run Erlang.
> IIRC, at launch Larrabee will require a program running in the CPU to
> hand it the instructions to run. This basically means that the Erlang
> VM would have to be rewritten to support Larrabee. As Larrabee does
> not support interrupts, and other hardware communication instructions,
> Erlang would have to make sure that all OS processes are kept in the
> conventional CPU cores, while the Larrabee is only handed the
> processes that only manipulate memory. On top of that, Larabee
> implementions will most likely not have direct access to the main CPU
> memory, so any process data would need to be transported to the GPU
> memory.
>
> Not impossible, but it still won't work out of the box.
>
> Timothy
>
>
> On Sat, Apr 4, 2009 at 4:04 PM, G.S. <corticalcomputer@REDACTED> wrote:
> > The fact that Larrabee has 64 general purpose (relatively speaking)
> Cores,
> > and one can utilize them for processing is a benefit in itself. It's much
> > more general than the Nvidia's Tesla, and unlike cell architecture, all
> > Cores are the same.
> > After all, this is what Erlang is all about, concurrent high throughput
> > computing.
> >
> >
> > On Sat, Apr 4, 2009 at 1:53 PM, Kenneth Lundin <kenneth.lundin@REDACTED
> >
> > wrote:
> >>
> >> The Erlang VM needs an operating system to run on.
> >> Is there any OS that runs on the Larrabee?
> >>
> >> I have never heard of anyone running Erlang on the Larrabee and we
> >> have for sure never tried it and I don't really
> >> understand why that would be very interesting.
> >>
> >> Erlang can utilize a CPU with many general purpose cores or maybe act
> >> as a controller running still running on geneal purpose cores but
> >> administering jobs to be run on other special purpose cores.
> >> The extra instructions available on Larrabee is nothing the current
> >> Erlang VM can make benefit of.
> >>
> >> /Kenneth Erlang/OTP, Ericsson
> >>
> >> On Sat, Apr 4, 2009 at 6:32 PM, G.S. <corticalcomputer@REDACTED>
> wrote:
> >> > Hello everyone,
> >> >
> >> > Does the Erlang community know by any chance whether Erlang will run
> on
> >> > the
> >> > Larrabbee cpu, and will be able to utilize all the cores properly,
> >> > compile...?
> >> > Larrabee is MIMD as you guys know, and so would be perfect for Erlang.
> >> >
> >> > Regards,
> >> > -Gene
> >> >
> >> > _______________________________________________
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> >> > http://www.erlang.org/mailman/listinfo/erlang-questions
> >> >
> >
> >
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>
>
>
> --
> “One of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was
> that–lacking zero–they had no way to indicate successful termination
> of their C programs.”
> (Robert Firth)
>
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