[Haskell-cafe] Specialized Computer Architecture - A Question

[Gwern Branwen]

On Sun, Mar 17, 2013 at 5:56 PM, OWP <owpmailact at gmail.com> wrote:
> These "stock architectures", were they really so good that they out
> performed the specialized ones on it's own merits or was this mainly due to
> Moore's Law on transistors?  In other words, suppose we separate Moore's Law
> from the stock architecture, would it still outperform the specialized ones?

It's not really meaningful to separate them. Any time you use a custom
architecture, you are forfeiting all sorts of network effects - and
sooner or later, the custom architecture falls behind. If you want to
make an analogy, when you go with a custom architecture, you are
trading a process where your computing power increases O(2^n) for one
with a big constant factor but where computing power increases O(1)...

> "In practice replacing digital computers with an alternative computing paradigm is a risky proposition.
Alternative computing architectures, such as parallel digital
computers have not tended to be commercially viable, because Moore's
Law has consistently enabled conventional von Neumann architectures to
render alternatives unnecessary. Besides Moore's Law, digital
computing also benefits from mature tools and expertise for optimizing
performance at all levels of the system: process technology,
fundamental circuits, layout and algorithms. Many engineers are
simultaneously working to improve every aspect of digital technology,
while alternative technologies like analog computing do not have the
same kind of industry juggernaut pushing them forward."

from Benjamin Vigoda, "Analog Logic: Continuous-Time Analog Circuits
for Statistical Signal Processing" (2003 PhD thesis)

-- 
gwern
http://www.gwern.net