Information technology as one of the representative technology of the third industrial revolution, greatly promote the emergence and development of information industry. At present, the global electronic information industry competition, the key areas of semiconductor field innovation blustery, core chip change to further accelerate the pace of technical development, calculating a new trend of development, a variety of computing paradigm and architecture are gradually, start into the era of "big computing". From Intel launched the first processor in the 1970 s to now, over a single-core chip architecture, such as homogeneous multi-core in different periods, the current is moving towards heterogeneous multi-core era. With increased parallelism, homogeneous system parallel redundancy between the processor core is more and more big, not parallel task coordination work is becoming more and more lead to increase the system performance increases with redundant close to saturation. Heterogeneous multi-core chips and breakthrough innovation involves hardware and software level fusion, is a new hot spot, pervasive computing and information industry development of important new turning point.
Global heterogeneous computing presents three tripartite confrontation
Information technology is cloud computing and the computing, software and hardware, intelligent and interactive, computing and communications, and other technology integration development situation. After mononuclear, homogeneous multi-core technology development, such as heterogeneous multi-core chips and the system is calculated by high performance computing, business, computing, mobile computing applications such as the development of the inevitable choice.
Heterogeneous computing system there are two ways: one is the multiple different types of processor chip to realize node level by means of integration between heterogeneous computing (called between heterogeneous); The second is based on single (silicon) on chip integrate multiple heterogeneous computing chip implementation of different processor core, namely the heterogeneous computing in chip level (called internal heterogeneous). The second kind of heterogeneous computing chip technology is the latest technology.
Heterogeneous computing chip is to different structures of the Central Processor, the CPU (Central Processing Unit), Graphics Processor GPU (Graphics Processing Unit), Digital Signal Processor DSP (Digital Signal Processor) and FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) and other specific hardware acceleration Unit according to relevant technical standards and specifications of organic internal integration on a chip, task by the most appropriate Unit of work, realize collaborative computing between different heterogeneous cores.
As homogeneous multi-core reach to a certain extent, improve computing performance through nuclear stack face serious challenges, chip level heterogeneous computing can eliminate isomorphism calculation data transmission time between CPU and GPU, DSP, improve calculation efficiency greatly, and by the performance of collaborative support good graphics processing, information and communication, artificial intelligence, big data applications, based on the unified programming norms and standards, can greatly reduce the difficulty of software development programming, reduce product development and maintenance costs. Chip level heterogeneous computing has become one of the mainstream technology to solve the calculation and performance bottlenecks.
At present, the global Heterogeneous computing presents three tripartite confrontation, respectively is the AMD, qualcomm, ARM, samsung, such as Beijing huaxia core as the main body of the global HSA Heterogeneous computing systems (Heterogeneous System Architecture) alliance, give priority to with IBM, Google, nvidia OpenPOWER alliance and the Heterogeneous computing System to Intel. Among them, the Intel heterogeneous computing system used mainly for its own products and services, in PC and mobile computing obvious advantages of high performance; HSA is completely open heterogeneous computing alliance, as a result of the ARM, qualcomm and samsung giants such as participation, has significant advantages in the field of high-performance mobile computing. OpenPOWER alliance on the basis of IBM POWER chip architecture technology, set up a time at the latest, mainly for high performance computing applications.
Heterogeneous computing as an emerging technology also faces many problems and challenges, for example, from the traditional homogeneous systems, multi-core heterogeneous between heterogeneous to pills, how to correspond to different ways of programming, software and hardware architecture and ecological system, etc.; For heterogeneous computing system, whether it heterogeneous between heterogeneous or pills, all need to consider how to establish and improve the hardware and software system to support a new heterogeneous computing system, and solve the ecological problems, make the downstream industry chain is calculated using heterogeneous users active technology. In response to the above difficulties and challenges, in the above three, Intel based on its process, technology advancement, has been in the field of PC development path to the heterogeneous computing technology, there are between CPU and GPU chip heterogeneous and X86 SSE (Streaming SIMD Extensions) to the DSP chip heterogeneous products, satellite and to develop the field of intelligent terminals such as mobile computing.
Intel company in June 2015, $16.7 billion deal to buy the world's second largest Altera FPGA company, become the world's only have realized in on chip CPU + GPU + DSP + FPGA heterogeneous ability of the company. OpenPOWER chip in the field of high performance computing technology such as using Power8 advantages and the application of IBM product ecological basis, have the advantage in the field of high performance computing. OpenPOWER the CPU vendor IBM joint nvidia GPU chip suppliers, the FPGA suppliers spirit, released the CPU + GPU + FPGA chip between heterogeneous computing systems, mainly for high-end server market. HSA mainly provide on-chip heterogeneous multi-core solutions - from an on-chip heterogeneous IP (Intellectual Property) nuclear to heterogeneous chip inside, can effectively solve the application of software reuse and interoperability, cooperation in open way to build the global ecological heterogeneous computing industry.
Since 2010, the global mainstream chip manufacturers are more of a new generation of heterogeneous multi-core processor chip (heterogeneous) within a piece of research and development efforts. Released in October 2015, AMD global support HSA standard specification in the first paragraph on chip heterogeneous (CPU + GPU) multicore desktop computer processor chips; ARM and Imagination is expected in 2016 to support HSA architecture of heterogeneous processor IP core; Our country published support HSA huaxia core processor series tool chain, and the upcoming based on CPU, GPU, DSP IP core of three nuclear heterogeneous processor core and products; Mediatek issued on chip heterogeneous processor roadmap; Qualcomm, samsung and nvidia and IBM are cooperative research and development on chip heterogeneous processors.
Heterogeneous processors, therefore, the outbreak of large-scale application period is coming. Expected future globally, in mobile phone, tablet and other high-performance mobile computing, embedded chip heterogeneous multi-core chips market size of about 2 billion, sales of about $40 billion; In desktop computers, notebook computers and personal and professional computer fields such as industrial control, about 300 million pieces of the size of the market, sales of about $55 billion; In big data, artificial intelligence, and other areas of the high performance computer, about 10 million pieces of the size of the market, sales of about $20 billion. At present, the world is developing on chip heterogeneous processor IP core company mainly have ARM, Imagination and Beijing huaxia core, had already launched or were planning a heterogeneous multi-core processor chip companies mainly AMD, Intel, qualcomm, nvidia, etc.
Global HSA and OpenPOWER heterogeneous computing industry alliance the two main goals are: one is the dominant industry standards and norms related to the formulation and heterogeneous computing, to promote product interoperability testing and validation; Second, the alliance cooperation heterogeneous computing global ecological, together against Intel strong advantages in the field of heterogeneous computing. The heterogeneous computing launch products in the global impact, the first largest HSA alliance is AMD launched in 2012 by the United States, by about 60 processor design, tool design, software design and other companies and university and other research institutions to form. The union members have AMD, ARM, qualcomm and samsung, mediatek, Texas instruments, Imagination, companies such as huawei, LG, huaxia core. Alliance main aim is to: leading to formulate industry standards and norms related to the heterogeneous computing, to promote product interoperability testing and validation; Alliance cooperation heterogeneous computing global ecological application. Based on a series of software and hardware interface standards and specifications issued by the HSA, the industry can design very rich products, almost covers from low-power embedded, intelligent terminal, tablet, PC desktop systems to the cloud server, etc. Most of the equipment. Huaxia core in HSA is put forward for the first time in the league to compile DSP into HSA system framework and support, making an important contribution to the expansion of the heterogeneous system.
Will push for high-end chip industry in our country
Heterogeneous multi-core computing chips and the system can be widely used in high performance computer, desktop computer, consumer electronic products such as intelligent terminal, and equipment manufacturing, defense, military industry and so on various areas.
First of all, the heterogeneous multi-core computing chip has the advantage. Compared with the traditional homogeneous multi-core computing chips, heterogeneous multi-core computing chip advantage is mainly manifested in the following aspects: one is the performance and power consumption advantages. Under the condition of the same power consumption, heterogeneous multi-core chip of substantial increase calculation efficiency. The second is product development advantage. Heterogeneous multi-core computing chips based on rigorous standard system, different types of processors can organic integration between unit and docking, sharply lower threshold for product development, make more developers can join application and product development innovation. Three is differentiation innovation advantage. Under the precondition of compatible with relevant standards, heterogeneous computing encourage chip designers choose processor unit, independent of the processor can even design and instruction set, to give the processor innovation to create huge space. Four is the ecological building. Heterogeneous computing chip to realize decoupling between the software and hardware, achieve seamless docking and integration between different vendors chip components, has a huge advantage in the ecological project, and greatly reduce traditional single-core and homogeneous multi-core era ecological bottlenecks caused by the development obstacles.
Secondly, chip level heterogeneous computing to accelerate the development of high-end chip industry in China. High-end chip is hardware and software innovation foundation, although our country has obtained the Power authorized, ARM and MIPS architecture, but the design of high-end chip required IP is not abundant, our technical team can not be completely deconstruction architecture of its authorized. If not fully grasp the IP technology, then once the authorization to suspend, there are still out of stock and security risks, so it can't work independently controllable. At the same time, our country has been on the MIPS instruction set, such as the core chip technology and the market progress, but the following the construction of the ecological environment still faces huge challenges. Instruction set, or no a set of complete instructions can be used to program the user for a given task, ecological environment construction is the only evaluation standard instruction set the wheat from the chaff.
Domestic high-end chip will enter the market is a traditional microprocessor giant has almost monopoly of the market, in an increasingly competitive today, market and technology means choosing the non-mainstream technology route out of the big family of the ecological environment, destined to no development way. Only compatible with the mainstream, rely on the development of ecology, the ecological, to make the domestic processors standing on a high starting point, have to compete with international manufacturers. At present, the processor dependence on ecosystem gradually weakened from the PC.
Therefore, from the industrial market, mobile phone, smart TV, car terminal to the high-end servers and storage devices, domestic high-end chip ecosystem can be relatively easy to solve all problems. With the establishment and development of HSA, HSA under the framework of the ecological problem is becoming more and more small. Under the framework of HSA, ecological system support by the ARM, AMD, qualcomm, Imagination, mediatek, core and other dozens of Chinese chip companies, HSA directly, without having to develop independent ecological system. Currently, CPU + GPU + DSP + FPGA heterogeneous integration is one of the mainstream trend in the field of chip, the chip industry is both a challenge and opportunity in our country, to further strengthen layout, promote heterogeneous computing chip technology and industrial ecology to establish as soon as possible.
Heterogeneous multi-core computing chip technology and industry, first of all, you can get rid of our traditional architecture in chip compete with foreign mainstream chip makers such as Intel. In a heterogeneous processor chip that is in the same starting line with foreign mainstream processor manufacturers in China, in a new generation of heterogeneous multi-core processor design, test and application. Second, can achieve heterogeneous multi-core processor and domestic seamless docking and mutual support of the operating system, based on domestic operating system and domestic heterogeneous multi-core processor, form a strong support information security technology and industry platform in China. Third, it is possible to build heterogeneous computing applications ecosystem dominated by China. With the help of the advantage in such aspects as market, application status and influence, the formation of fully independent controllable domestic high-end processors ecosystem, promote industrial independent innovation, eclecticism, make it become the international mainstream technology path and ecological system.
Should accelerate the strength of heterogeneous computing industry in China
In addition to the core of an ancient name for China in our country at present, huawei and jiangnan institute of computing technology, there is no other completely independent intellectual property rights heterogeneous multi-core chips design company. Chip level heterogeneous computing technology and industry development in China is tracking on chip less heterogeneous computing universities and enterprises, inadequate investment, the whole industry chain foundation weak, the lack of high-end talent, and many other problems.
Core processor in nearly 20 years, our country to carry out multiple research projects and achieved including the godson, ShenWei, ascended, the volunteers, signs in the core, sheng in the macro core and a series of achievements of domestic processors, covers almost all the mainstream and non-mainstream instruction architecture in the world. For example: the godson of Chinese academy of sciences on the basis of MIPS core architecture developed a series of high-end processors, ShenWei processor developed jiangnan institute of computing technology, China's electronic information industry group co., LTD., production based on ARM V8 instruction set of FT - 1500 - a series of processors, Shanghai trillion core bought our Taiwan VIA VIA X86 technology and echelon, research and development based on Intel X86 architecture superscalar processor, the CPU in the suzhou sheng macro core for the OpenPOWER coalition, IBM is developed 8 CPU Power. Above results are mainly concentrated in the field of traditional isomorphism computational processors, with foreign isomorphism computing processors around the gap between the highest level of generation.
In the chip level heterogeneous computing, at present the Chinese core, huawei, jiangnan institute of computing technology is to research and develop the independent intellectual property rights heterogeneous processor design. Among them, huawei mainly based on the ARM heterogeneous computing processor core design heterogeneous computing chips and downstream products. Jiangnan institute of computing technology is developed "ShenWei - 3" high-performance heterogeneous the core processor, is the first in the world one trillion times all the nuclear fusion of heterogeneous processors, successfully applied in "shenzhou VI" supercomputer. Huaxia core design of CPU + GPU + DSP IP core platform, from the instruction set, micro architecture to tool chain with completely independent intellectual property rights, is an international leader in the field of high-performance mobile computing.
Long-term since, our country in the field of semiconductor chip mainly follows the following strategy, lead to in the field of core technology independent innovation ability is weak, lack of voice. Is not sensitive to new technology of heterogeneous processors, for example, no timely follow up HSA hardware, transition of language and the roadmap of parallel programming software and protocol, etc.
One is the insufficient understanding of the importance of heterogeneous computing chips, related research and development institutions. On chip heterogeneous multi-core computing chip processor industry is to build China important opportunities for global advantage, but in addition to the core of an ancient name for China domestic, huawei, jiangnan institute of computing technology, a few enterprises, most of the processor design enterprises and institutions are still spent licensing, introduction, research and development of the traditional homogeneous multi-core computing architectures. Core patents, which may lead to heterogeneous multi-core computing ecosystem by foreign giants beat layout and monopoly, hinder the core chip technology breakthroughs and innovation of our country.
2 it is heterogeneous computing system including chip, bus and interface technology, programming tools, storage management, application technology and so on. Heterogeneous multi-core chips original innovation investment big, general enterprise strength is limited. In the core technology such as heterogeneous multi-core architecture, instruction set, micro structure, the design of tool chain need to invest a lot of money and time to achieve breakthrough, independent intellectual property rights in their own pressure.
Three is to the heterogeneous multi-core high-end processor chips in the field of new situation, new business model study is less, not good at using global high-end processor chips open technology, standards, resources. In our country so far has not been effectively use its huge market and user resources affect the global alliance for high-end processor chips related to breakthrough technology and industry in China's favor.
Four is the development of heterogeneous multi-core high-end chip, to first-class technical talent, and our country most high-end processor chip design companies starting point is low, the foundation is weak, the lack of core technology talents and high-end design talent. High-end processor chip industry in China to be globally attracting high-end technology and industry leading talent.
By boat out to sea to establish industrial ecology
Heterogeneous computing is not easy, the author suggests the following several aspects.
First of all, to chip level heterogeneous computing technology promoting the development of high-end chip industry. Heterogeneous computing chip is very good to support the global information technology field of computing and communications, software and hardware integration, high performance and low power consumption, and other areas of the different technology development trend. At present, China's high-end processor chip design enterprise foundation is weak, lack of core technology, don't mix, with only their own power can't compete with the international mainstream manufacturers equivalence. Chip level heterogeneous computing technology is an important opportunity of development, relying on the HSA global alliance, the advantage of establishing a conducive to China's ecological, can rapidly promote the development of high-end chip technology and industry in China, the coma catch up. We should seize the processor a lifetime in the field of innovation and development opportunities and actively put on chip in heterogeneous computing and the development of high-end processor chip technology, industry, Internet + 4.0 and public entrepreneurship, has the innovation.
Second, with heterogeneous computing chip development end computing. At present, a new generation of information technology to accelerate the penetrating the producer services, the Internet and industrial convergence innovation, and drive the traditional information field transformation acceleration to the real economy. Server-side computing system related technology and product are diverse, efficient, intelligent, comprehensive fusion penetration in the direction of the development, thus to end computing chips also put forward higher performance requirements (needs can not only satisfy the compute-intensive applications, can also meet the needs of data-intensive applications).
Heterogeneous computing chip level will be huge amounts of data parallel job shall be borne by the CPU allocation from the past to the GPU and DSP, and between the CPU and GPU, DSP processors achieve collaborative computing, eliminate the isomorphism between CPU and GPU, DSP when calculating data synchronization and transmission overhead, and dozens of times increase calculation efficiency. On chip heterogeneous computing chip can not only meet the needs of computationally intensive high-performance computing applications, can also meet the needs of data intensive things processing applications, can be used as important for the development of the computing system core technology.
Once again, relying on from the boat out to sea, to establish ecological high-end chip industry. China should actively participate in the global alliance for heterogeneous computing industry and standard of the research, build the project. 2010 years later, the heterogeneous computing technology and industrial development in the whole world, although the United States have more in the field of chip technology, market and ecological advantages, but participation, and promote HSA us and gives us the opportunity to stand in heterogeneous computing the same starting line. At present, China has become a director of HSA, the sponsors (Promoter), on October 21, 2015, Chinese core company vice President election as President of HSA. With HSA alliance borrow ship at sea, relying on the global fight against Intel industrial power, compatible with standard building high-end chip autonomous core technology oriented industrial ecology is a feasible way.
Finally, the preparation of our country as soon as possible a new generation of heterogeneous multi-core computing chip industry alliance. At present, our country should actively build a new generation of heterogeneous multi-core computing chip industry alliances, build on the internationalization of China's independent development and leading ecological application system. Fine, heterogeneous computing industrial division of labor in the field of special high technical threshold, innovation space is large, these features are very beneficial to our country's relevant enterprises and research institutes to participate, in the software application and (integrated circuit) is a very important custom chips group advantage, increase heterogeneous computing industry's share of the global and status; At the same time, build our heterogeneous computing industry alliance and standard platform will also for related enterprises to participate in the international first-class technical innovation and industrial collaboration provides unprecedented stage.
