Russia's 16nm Elbrus CPU: 16-Core, 2.0 GHz, 4-socket 16TB capable, VLIW CPU

[Zenaan Harkness]

On Sat, Oct 10, 2020 at 01:37:56AM +1100, Zenaan Harkness wrote:
>    Russian Company Tapes Out 16-Core Elbrus CPU: 2.0 GHz, 16 TB of RAM in 4-Way System
>    https://www.tomshardware.com/news/russian-company-tapes-out-16-core-elbrus-cpu-20-ghz-16-tb-of-ram-in-4-way-system
> 
> 
> So the anarchist crowd spec's "open source/ open hardware" designs, for what it's worth.
> 
> Step 1 is understanding the development models and the possibilities around various "open"ness options.
> 
> "Open" anything has engineering tradeoffs, as do other models, the primary competition being "proprietary", which is mostly also "closed".
> 
> The advantages of "open" include:
> 
>  - maintaining relevance and interest outside of the primary sponsor (e.g. govt. and military)
> 
>  - the possibility of development of an 'ecosystem' (software, hardware, community, startups/ companies/ industries)
> 
>  - to the extent that an ecosystem is born and develops, there grows a "demand economy" for the hardware at issue - this becomes a symbiotic thing where interest drives innovation drives demand which drives down costs, which in turn drives the interest and demand
> 
> 
> IF such an ecosystem is found to be a goal, certain steps foster this pathway, such as a "Rasberry-Pi"-type dev board, then a desktop workstation class computer, etc.  Not unlike the steps IBM has taken with their Power architecture.


One can imagine a rather cheeky "pip Intel at their own posted intention" scenario where say (using TSMC's very cool TSV tech) an enthusiast class CPU has a mix of cores, say:

 - 4 Elbrus cores

 - a couple of old (no longer in patent) x86 (ASM level) cores - or probably better yet, a POWER core

 - a Xilinx-style programmable core (this ought be recreated as "original IP" due to the relatively simple/repetitive nature of such cores)

 - if the programmable core is not exciting enough, a custom media core which say just does de/encode of MP3 and VP9

 - and while you're at it, throw in say 1GiB of L3 cache to spike the fun in an almost "illicit" way :)

 - oh, and to rekindle the glory days of low latency keyboarding from the halcyon days of home computing, throw in an on-chip "zero latency" "keyboard controller" (really just some serial line controller - perhaps this is what PS2 connection is?) which would totally 'rock' for certain gaming genres


The point being, something a bit quirky yet inspiring of possibilities, may spike interest and even passion in the enthusiast community.