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from the an-organization-of-very-special-registers dept.
http://www.righto.com/2019/10/how-special-register-groups-invaded.html
Half a century ago, the puzzling phrase "special register groups" started showing up in definitions of "CPU", and it is still there. In this blog post, I uncover how special register groups went from an obscure feature in the Honeywell 800 mainframe to appearing in the Washington Post.
While researching old computers, I found a strange definition of "Central Processing Unit" that keeps appearing in different sources. From a book reprinted in 2017:1
"Central Processor Unit (CPU)—Part of a computer system which contains the main storage, arithmetic unit and special register groups. It performs arithmetic operations, controls instruction processing and provides timing signals."
At first glance, this definition seems okay, but a few moments thought reveals some problems. Storage is not part of the CPU. But more puzzling, what are special register groups? A CPU has registers, but "special register groups" is not a normal phrase.
It turns out that this definition has been used extensively for over half a century, even though it doesn't make sense, copied and modified from one source to another. Special register groups were a feature in the Honeywell 800 mainframe computer, introduced in 1959. Although this computer is long-forgotten, its impact inexplicably remains in many glossaries. The Honeywell 800 allowed eight programs to run on a single processor, switching between programs after every instruction.3 To support this, each program had a "special register group" in hardware, its own separate group of 32 registers (program counter, general-purpose registers, index registers, etc.).
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday October 24 2019, @05:32PM (13 children)
Non-volatile storage will be made a part of the CPU with 3DSoC [darpa.mil]. (I imagine an alternative design could use volatile memory instead.)
Initial versions will have at least 4 GB, which is probably not enough storage for most people, but I would rather have a 16 GB 3DSoC over a normal system with a 1 TB SSD any day. Cheap Windows laptops, Chromebooks, tablets, and smartphones with only 16 GB of NAND storage are still sold today, and they can get the job done. Get at least that amount of storage into a 3DSoC, and you'll have something incredible.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Thursday October 24 2019, @08:57PM (4 children)
They could circumvent the heating issues by putting it all in cache and going wide: https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/19/the-five-technical-challenges-cerebras-overcame-in-building-the-first-trillion-transistor-chip/ [techcrunch.com]
:D
compiling...
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday October 24 2019, @09:36PM (3 children)
They'll reduce heat by running it as low as 0.5 Watts.
There's a big energy savings from moving the CPU cores to within nanometers of the memory.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Thursday October 24 2019, @11:01PM (2 children)
But if they have the room for it, they could just as well stick conventional cache in there as well... So, you have to wonder why didn't they just go with a super-sized die like those guys?
Regardless, I'm not saying it's not going to happen. But having waited for Intel to deliver a single node reduction for this long... Well, something tells me not to hold my breath for any of these "just around the corner" fabrication methods.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday October 25 2019, @04:22AM (1 child)
One error in a single gate and your very complex chip lands in the rejected bin.
How lucky or masterful you need to be to end with a good enough number of chips that pass the tests?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Friday October 25 2019, @12:02PM
High cost big silicon dies like Intel's and IBM's are designed so it's either possible to fuse out defective logic blocks and sell the chips as reduced features / lower performance models or also place redundancies that you can fuse on and off.
Well, it's a gross simplification of yield equations and design choices, but there's ways around production defects for sure.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday October 24 2019, @11:59PM (7 children)
Oh, boy, I can't wait for the security bugs that will generate.
It'll be like the current Meltdown and Spectre but raised to the power of 3 ('cause the chips will be 3D, see? - large grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday October 25 2019, @12:24AM (6 children)
Security bugs don't matter unless you're networked.
Once you connect to the surveillance network known as the Internet, omae wa mou shindeiru (nani?!).
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday October 25 2019, @12:49AM (5 children)
An optimist, as always, ain't you? (a pity even more subtle attacks exist [wikipedia.org])
The reciprocal of "If you connect to Internet, you are dead" is "If you are not dead, you didn't connect to the Internet" (modus tollens [soylentnews.org]), not "If you don't connect to the internet, you are not dead" (denying the antecedent [wikipedia.org]).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday October 25 2019, @01:18AM (3 children)
There's a network involved somewhere. Possibly a non-traditional one, or a compromised meatbag walking back to the spy handler.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday October 25 2019, @03:02AM (2 children)
Mmmm-yeeaaah.
Everything IO is a network and all network is Internet. Furthermore, all the storage is disk**, and then we can use whatever words we want to always say something true.
For some values of true, that is, but that's OK, 'cause we're gonna to democratically debate anyway on what values of "true" are fakes††
And now time for the breaking commentaries‡‡, stay with us for Acidly Scorpion Jugged-Earwig Putrescent [youtube.com] advice: turn on the captions
----
** and all registers are storage anyway. And there is no such thing as "special registers" or, at least, they don't make a group, or the group is nothing special. And CPU is that thingie there but definitely not the disc.
†† because we are living in a post-truth society, baby. Wooohooo, your bloody engineering is no more valuable than my opinions. And thanks God for the second amendment, worse come to worst, we can eventually settle whatever arguments (over CPU or over any-and-all the other things) by having a civil - not necessarily civilized - war.
‡‡ those old bums used to call them "news", LOL.
---
very large GRIN
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday October 25 2019, @08:06PM (1 child)
On the Bendix G15d, the registers resided on a rotating magnetic drum.
-- hendrik
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 26 2019, @12:43AM
And because one has registers on magnetic drums, all registers are storage. Got your point.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday October 25 2019, @08:01PM
That's the contrapositive, not the reciprocal.