Microarch Club

Rick Altherr joins to talk about working on hardware performance analysis tools at Apple during the PowerPC to x86 transition, building flight control software for internet satellites at Google, discovering vulnerabilities in baseboard management controllers, and much more. We also spend an extended portion of the conversation on Rick's current work in quantum computing, including comparing and contrasting with classical computing, and examining some of the challenges of interfacing with these machines today.Rick's Site: https://www.kc8apf.net/Rick on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mxshift/Rick on Mastodon: https://social.treehouse.systems/@mxshiftRick on GitHub: https://github.com/mx-shiftRick's Mentoring Sign-Up: https://calendly.com/mxshiftDetailed Show Notes: https://microarch.club/episodes/110

Matt Godbolt joins to talk about early microprocessors, working in the games industry, performance optimization on modern x86 CPUs, and the compute infrastructure that powers the financial trading industry. We also discuss Matt's work on bringing YouTube to early mobile phones, and the origin story of Compiler Explorer, Matt's well-known open source project and website.Matt's Site: https://xania.org/Matt on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/godbolt/Matt on X: https://twitter.com/mattgodboltMatt on Mastodon: https://hachyderm.io/@mattgodboltMatt on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/mattgodbolt.bsky.socialDetailed Show Notes: https://microarch.club/episodes/101

Nathanael Huffman joins to talk about the magic of FPGAs, the role they play in domains ranging from medical imaging to data centers, and how software development principles can be applied to logic design. We also discuss how Nathanael and the team at Oxide Computer Company built a new rack-scale computer while working remotely, and what exactly happens when it powers on and boots up.Nathanael on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanael-huffman-5128024a/Nathanael on X: https://twitter.com/SyntheticGateNathanael on Mastodon: https://hachyderm.io/@SyntheticGateDetailed Show Notes: https://microarch.club/episodes/100

Robert Garner joins for a fascinating tour of the last 50 years of computing, told through his experiences working alongside pioneers of the industry on projects like the optical mouse, the Xerox STAR workstation, Sun Microsystems’ SPARC instruction set architecture, and many more. We also discuss Robert’s work preserving and restoring systems at the Computer History Museum, and his upcoming book on the technical history of Ethernet.Robert on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertgarner/Computer History Museum: https://computerhistory.org/Detailed Show Notes: https://microarch.club/episodes/11

Thomas Sohmers joins to discuss dropping out of high school at age 17 to start a chip company, lessons from the successes and failures of past processor architectures, the history of VLIW, and the new AI hardware appliances he and his team are building at Positron AI.Thomas on X: https://twitter.com/trsohmersThomas' Site: https://www.trsohmers.com/Show NotesWelcome Thomas Sohmers (00:01:22)Growing Up Around Computers (00:03:13)Digging Beneath the Software (00:05:56)Learning Python, C, and Arduino C (00:07:05) https://www.arduino.cc/reference/en/Learning About the Thiel Fellowship (00:07:44) https://thielfellowship.org/Starting Research at MIT at age 14 (00:09:24)Dropping out of High School and Starting Thiel Fellowship at age 17 (00:10:36)MIT ISN Lab (00:11:09) https://isn.mit.edu/Evaluating ARM Processors for High Performance Computing (00:11:28) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture_familyARM Calxeda Processor (00:11:38) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calxedahttps://www.zdnet.com/article/what-the-death-of-calxeda-means-for-the-future-of-microservers/Scaling Out Low Power Processors for Data Center Compute (00:12:27)Incorporating REX Computing (00:13:42) http://rexcomputing.com/https://fortune.com/2015/07/21/rex-computing/Facebook and the Open Compute Project (00:14:18) https://www.opencompute.org/Deciding Against Arm (00:14:49)ARMv8 (00:15:12) https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/arm/armv8Deciding to Design a New Architecture (00:16:26)Multiflow (00:18:23) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MultiflowGood Architecture Ideas from the Past (00:18:35)Thomas' Talk at Stanford (00:18:59) https://youtu.be/ki6jVXZM2XURISC vs. CISC Debate (00:19:37) https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/soco/projects/risc/risccisc/SPARC Instruction Set (00:20:04) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARCThe Importance of History (00:20:58)RISC Came Before CISC (00:23:08)CDC 6600 (00:23:20) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDC_6600Load-Store Architecture (00:23:53) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load–store_architectureIBM System/360 (00:24:02) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_System/360PowerPC (00:24:29) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerPCVLIW (00:25:02) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_long_instruction_wordELI-512 and Josh Fisher (00:25:05) https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/800046.801649https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_FisherFloating Point Systems, Inc. (FPS) (00:26:45) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_Point_SystemsMultiflow Compiler (00:26:52) https://www.cs.yale.edu/publications/techreports/tr364.pdfInstruction Level Parallelism (00:27:33) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instruction-level_parallelismIntel Itanium (00:28:20) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ItaniumItanium is not a VLIW Architecture (00:29:04)Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computer (EPIC) (00:29:22) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explicitly_parallel_instruction_computingx86 and Pentium (00:30:18) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PentiumImpact of Branch Prediction and Caching on Determinism (00:31:34) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branch_predictorhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPU_cacheWhy Itanium Failed (00:32:27)REX's NEO Architecture (00:35:29) http://rexcomputing.com/#neoarchHard Real-Time Determinism (00:35:41)Scratchpad Memory (00:35:54) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scratchpad_memoryRemoving Memory Management (TLB, MMU, etc.) (00:36:18) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Translation_lookaside_bufferhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_management_unitALU, FPU, and Register Files (00:37:14) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arithmetic_logic_unithttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating-point_unithttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_fileBenefits of Removing Implicit Caching Layers (00:38:30)VLIW in Signal Processing (00:39:51) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_signal_processorVLIW Won in a Silent Way (00:40:49)Original Reason for Hardware-Managed Caching (00:41:26)Impact of VLIW and Software-Managed Memory on Compile Times (00:42:41) http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/aries/Documents/vliw.pdfLLVM and Sufficiently Advanced Open Source Compilers (00:42:49) https://llvm.org/Apple Transition from PowerPC to x86 to Arm (00:43:31) https://en.wikipedia.org/wi...

Philip Freidin joins to talk about developing a passion for electronics and computer architecture while growing up in Australia, getting started on the PDP-8, his grand plan to work on AMD bit-slice processors, and plenty more.Philip on X: https://twitter.com/PhilipFreidinPhilip’s Site: http://www.fliptronics.com/Show NotesWelcome Philip Freidin (00:01:02)Growing up in Australia (00:03:25)Teletype Model 33 ASR (00:07:10)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletype_Model_33Kilocore Ticks (00:09:15)General Electric GE-235 (00:11:50)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GE-200_serieshttps://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/mainframe-computers/7/178/720Learning Fortran and Algol (00:16:03)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortranhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ALGOLPeeling Back Abstractions (00:19:02)Working on Hospital Electronics (00:19:51)Making a Digital Clock at Age 14 (00:24:31)DEC PDP-8 (00:26:26)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-8Why DEC Used the PDP Name (00:29:40)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmed_Data_ProcessorGlass Teletypes (00:31:01)Programming in FOCAL and Fortran (00:31:31)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOCAL_(programming_language)Linking and Loading with Paper Tape (00:33:27)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_tapeDECtape (00:35:57)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DECtapeDesigning a Floppy Disk Drive System for PDP-8 (00:37:01)PDP-8 OMNIBUS Backplane (00:37:38)https://gunkies.org/wiki/OMNIBUSSoftware Support for Floppy Disk Drive (00:39:42)OS/8 Operating System (00:40:26)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS/8DEC Manuals (00:43:53)https://bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/The Onion Model for Abstraction (00:45:21)Understanding Computer Architecture (00:48:29)Moving to the PDP-11 (00:52:31)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-11PDP-11/34 and Microcode (00:54:36)https://gunkies.org/wiki/PDP-11/3474181 ALU Chip (00:54:49)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/74181DEC VAX 11/780 (00:55:29)https://gunkies.org/wiki/VAX-11/78074182 Chip (00:57:55)https://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/sn54s182.pdfPerformance Optimization by Understanding Dependencies (01:00:01)DSP and FPGAs (01:01:06)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field-programmable_gate_arrayhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_signal_processingFIR Filter (01:05:12)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite_impulse_responseTMS320 (01:06:16)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TMS320Tradeoffs Between DSP Chips and FPGAs (01:11:46)Applications of FIR Filters (01:13:38)FPGAs in Communication Systems (01:15:28)Optimization Starts with Algorithms (01:16:20)Misuse of Floating Point (01:16:55)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating-point_unitJoining AMD (01:18:57)Bit Slice (01:19:53)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit_slicingIntel 3002 (01:20:52)https://www.cpu-zone.com/3002/intel3002.pdfMMI 6701 (01:21:00)https://www.cpushack.com/2011/03/31/cpu-of-the-day-mmi-6701-bit-slice/AMD Am2901 (01:22:16)https://www.righto.com/2020/04/inside-am2901-amds-1970s-bit-slice.htmlData General Eclipse MV/8000 (01:23:24)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_General_Eclipse_MV/8000Mini Supercomputers (01:24:13)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MinisupercomputerDesigning first chip at age 12 (01:25:11)RS Latch (01:28:03)https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/textbook/digital/chpt-10/s-r-latch/74LS279 (01:28:39)https://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/sn74ls279a.pdfLearning about Bit Slice (01:30:00)R&D Electronics (01:30:53)Internal and External Applications Engineers (01:32:45)Becoming Australia’s First Field Applications Engineer (01:36:11)MMI Programmable Array Logic (PAL) (01:37:08)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programmable_Array_LogicMeeting the Bit Slice Designers (01:38:03)S-100 Bus (01:39:01)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-100_busTeaching at University (01:39:50)Sending Resume to AMD (01:42:27)AMD Interview (01:43:16)Moving to the U.S. (01:45:40)AMD’s Secret RISC CPU (01:46:19)Am29000 (01:50:19)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Am29000Why RISC over CISC? (01:51:38)https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/soco/projects/risc/risccisc/Memory is free (01:52:40)Compiler Optimizations (01:56:36)Mapping Instructions to Opcodes (02:00:15)RISC-V and Fixed-Position Operands (02:01:16)CISC Became RISC (02:03:47)Register Windows on Am29000 (02:05:22)https://danielmangum.com/posts/retrospective-sparc-register-windows/Texas Instruments TMS9900 (02:07:04)https://en.wikipedia....

In this introductory episode, I detail my mission and goals for the podcast. Subscribe for new episodes every other Wednesday!(00:00) - Intro (03:07) - Wrap Up Show Notes:"A Three Year Bet on Chip Design"More: https://microarch.club/episodes/0