These Chips Are Better Than CPUs (ASICs and FPGAs)

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  • Опубликовано: 2 окт 2024
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    Learn about ASICs and FPGAs, and why they're often more powerful than regular processors.
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Комментарии • 574

  • @luisernestofdez6518
    @luisernestofdez6518 2 года назад +1194

    FPGAs so great at doing everything, they dont do anything out of the box

    • @saricubra2867
      @saricubra2867 2 года назад +75

      That's why they AREN'T better than x86 based CPUs.
      Clickbait title for the video

    • @ZaPpaul
      @ZaPpaul 2 года назад +34

      @@saricubra2867 That depends on what x86 cpu you are talking about. There is an x86 core that performs pretty well.

    • @hjups
      @hjups 2 года назад +45

      They're not great at doing everything, just often better than doing it in software. The only thing a FPGA does better than an ASIC is take less time to develop, cost less in small quantities, and be reconfigurable.

    • @saricubra2867
      @saricubra2867 2 года назад

      @@ZaPpaul Every x86 based equivalent and more powerful than Intel's Haswell.

    • @ZaPpaul
      @ZaPpaul 2 года назад +18

      @@saricubra2867 There will be an FPGA able to recreate the latest and greatest intel CPUs and faster. They are just not available yet. By then of course the newer CPU's will be faster. The point is FPGA are incredibly versatile and have lots of uses. One day all CPU's will be on FPGA type silicon. It's the future for sure.

  • @SirChaddington
    @SirChaddington 2 года назад +151

    I work in a cyber security company that uses FPGAs 😃, we use them to monitor network traffic at rates of hundreds of GB/s.

    • @kedharguhan
      @kedharguhan 2 года назад +6

      Which FPGAs are those ! I always thought fpgas don’t exceed MHz range

    • @SirChaddington
      @SirChaddington 2 года назад +16

      @@kedharguhan We mostly use Intel Stratix 10 FPGAs

    • @harrkev
      @harrkev 2 года назад +12

      @@kedharguhan Most modern FPGAs have a SERDES built in. so even 10 GB data will come in as a parallel stream, but much more slowly. Also, the data is likely coming in over multiple ports, and each port can afford to have its own dedicated logic (assuming that the FPGA is big enough).
      And the FPGA, like pretty much everything else, has gotten faster. But even hundreds of MHz should be enough to keep up with 10 GHz serial data.

    • @CyanoSP
      @CyanoSP 2 года назад

      I meant serdes, my phone doesn't like that one

    • @albertsun3393
      @albertsun3393 2 года назад +2

      @@harrkev Scalability was what I always loved about FPGAs (especially for logic like this which doesn't require much arbitration or interaction between design units) - you instantiate ten units within a FPGA, then if that's not enough you get a larger FPGA and instantiate a hundred of them! It really makes anything that can take advantage of parallel compute so much easier to deal with.

  • @theairaccumulator7144
    @theairaccumulator7144 2 года назад +689

    The chips inside cheap toys are usually tiny micro controllers that are burned with a program from the factory.

    • @hubertnnn
      @hubertnnn 2 года назад +57

      That is more or less the definition of asic

    • @Donnirononon
      @Donnirononon 2 года назад +23

      You mean flashed rather than burned perhaps?

    • @Donnirononon
      @Donnirononon 2 года назад +103

      @@hubertnnn No, ASIC is hardwired. A lot of toys are not hardwired but actually ESP/Arduino/Microcontroller running C code or something small like micro python. This is true to a lot of smart devices and toys that go beyond the cost of a simple PCB and IC.

    • @ern0plus4
      @ern0plus4 2 года назад +39

      @@hubertnnn No, ASICs (and FPGAs) are wired (and "programmed"/burned) to do some functions, microcontrollers runs software to do so, the function is implemented as software, it's a program. Processors and microcontrollers are special, large ASICs, wired to able to run machine code program. Cheap toys don't require full-hardware speed (implemented as ASIC or FPGA), a slow (compated to desktop processors) microcontroller can do the job by running program, which performs the function.

    • @vincentstragier6628
      @vincentstragier6628 2 года назад +12

      @@hubertnnn an ASIC is not running code, unlike a microprocessor. It is (like a microprocessor) a bundle of electronic circuits, but they are designed for a specific application (Application Specific Integrated Circuit). Building an ASIC is more difficult than programming an application on a microprocessor, but it has advantages (speed, efficiency, etc.).

  • @damonstr
    @damonstr 2 года назад +431

    As an FPGA engineer, this video was surprisingly good.

    • @larrimus4309
      @larrimus4309 2 года назад +40

      One thing I wish he would have mentioned is how difficult FPGA's can be to program. Unless you have a very simple program, you'll have to break your program into at least a hundred different files to program it for an FPGA.

    • @iz723
      @iz723 2 года назад +3

      @@larrimus4309 unless you get a myRIO and use labview

    • @atif1538
      @atif1538 2 года назад +1

      @@larrimus4309 what kind of programming languages do they use?

    • @mwniels
      @mwniels 2 года назад +25

      @@atif1538 they are called hardware description languages (hdl). The most common languages are verilog (or systemverilog) and vhdl.
      Most commercial companies use verilog whereas anything defense or government related uses vhdl.

    • @atif1538
      @atif1538 2 года назад

      @@mwniels aight thanks

  • @BenjaminWheeler0510
    @BenjaminWheeler0510 2 года назад +504

    One major benefit to using an FPGA that Linus didn't mention is that they consume FAR less power than CPUs/GPUs. Accelerating a task like a ML core on an FPGA can meet/outperform a GPU at 1/10th the power draw. Also, depending on your design, they can perform orders of magnitude faster than software equivalent algorithms.
    Heterogenous systems are the future!

    • @saricubra2867
      @saricubra2867 2 года назад +28

      An FPGA could be programmed as an advanced floating point unit. I found modern x86 floating point perfomance from AMD and Intel very weak (need a lot of cycles) , that's why Apple M1 lineup is so poweful despite running at 3.2GHz thanks to the powerful floating point, that's why it has been a huge sucess for music producers, sound designers, editors...

    • @hubertnnn
      @hubertnnn 2 года назад +29

      @@saricubra2867 The issue with floating point calculation is that it is very hard to do and almost never used (until it does) in a PC,
      so a CPU usually have just one floating point unit shared between multiple cores.

    • @hjups
      @hjups 2 года назад +20

      @@saricubra2867 Do you happen to know why x86 floating point performance is weak? Is it in applications using SSE or x87? If it's x87, you should be using SSE (the x87 stack is a huge performance killer, especially in modern OoO CPUs).
      Comparably speaking, an x86 CPU is far better at the actual FP uOPs than a FPGA. Most of the time, you want to avoid FP on a FPGA and instead used fixed point, because FP takes up a lot of hardware resources and cycles comparable speaking. The major benefit though, is that you can chain the execution graph together in a FPGA to be purely pipelined if you have a regular workload (which is the case for filters and synthesizers in sound - digital signal processing). I would imagine that most sound DSP applications use fixed point though.

    • @AGuy-vq9qp
      @AGuy-vq9qp 2 года назад +3

      @@saricubra2867 aww... The intel fanboy grew up into an apple fanboy!

    • @monsterhunter445
      @monsterhunter445 2 года назад +14

      Thats kind of obvious if they do one specific task it's possible to optimize hence waste less energy. Where as a general purpose computer can't optimize ahead similar to why consoles can perform better on games than PC do to optimizations ahead of time.

  • @ralfpardatscher6466
    @ralfpardatscher6466 2 года назад +186

    "You can think of them as Lego blocks, once you put them together they stay that way but you can always take them apart and put them back together and make something completely different"
    Linus never had these flat small lego blocks that were impossible to take apart after u stacked them.

    • @NoNameAtAll2
      @NoNameAtAll2 2 года назад +21

      that's lenovo burned-to-never-work cpus

    • @crayzeape2230
      @crayzeape2230 2 года назад +10

      That's the very point where Linus got it wrong though, FPGA's don't "stay that way", they forget their configuration every time they are powered down. They load their bitstream from a configuration ROM every time they are powered up.

    • @robspiess
      @robspiess 2 года назад +20

      Somebody needs to purchase a "LEGO brick separator" tool. :)

    • @Dreddy72
      @Dreddy72 2 года назад +2

      @@robspiess those still dont do much for stubborn 1x2 stacked plates.

  • @dennisfahey2379
    @dennisfahey2379 2 года назад +189

    ASICs are fully optimized and dedicated logic. You get exactly what you want and not a gate more. It's not changeable but the fastest performance that can be achieved. (GPU's are ASICs.) FPGA are made of arrays of programmable blocks of logic, some of which you may not need for a specific function. They are slower and wasteful but for prototyping very nice. Many vendors have macro functions in their chips as well so you can just connect up to say a multiplier and not consume logic to make your own. Note that so much has been done on FPGAs that the libraries of completed designs are really valuable. This is why Intel bought Altera and AMD Xilinx. If you are doing System on a Chip - you just bought all anyone could ever ask for.
    When large ASICs are developed some teams take the course of buying or making an Asic Emulator. This is an array of FPGA's interconnected. You then take the ASIC's logic and partition it across the FPGA's. This gives you an accurate representation to run the design on to prove it functions before you spend millions building it. Note the emulator rarely runs at full speed but its a hell of a lot better than a running software simulation of a massive chip which can take a very long time. (Which is lost market opportunity.) You tend to find the tough bugs far faster. And of course the emulator can be used over and over again with fresh reloads of other unrelated efforts.

    • @fredbarfson2624
      @fredbarfson2624 2 года назад +2

      incorrect

    • @dennisfahey2379
      @dennisfahey2379 2 года назад +11

      @@fredbarfson2624 - Elaborate...

    • @wtftwitter8225
      @wtftwitter8225 2 года назад +2

      Yup most EDA is done on FPGAS. Billions of gates are emulated on large SOC and GPU designs. The debugging these emulators give saves manufacturers billions.

    • @dennisfahey2379
      @dennisfahey2379 2 года назад +10

      @@wtftwitter8225 - Yup - this has been part of my career. I recall one beast of an emulator we built from the ground up with 96 FPGAs found 60+ "corner case" really tough design flaws in less than a week. This would have taken 4 to 6 months with just the software based approach. The system was so successful the design was cost reduced (usually a version 2.0 post release phase) on the fly yielding substantial margin gains. I would not do a complex design any other way. This was for one of the largest ASICs TSMC had ever fabbed. Needless to say, I'm sold. And the fact that 8 months later, when that chip was shipping, that same emulator was pivoted to an entirely different effort unrelated to the original market was remarkable. Some happy engineers there.

    • @gmourao
      @gmourao 2 года назад

      @@dennisfahey2379 just a troll.

  • @savagepro9060
    @savagepro9060 2 года назад +58

    Linus: These chips are better than CPUs.
    Pringles: Of course! They're made of potatoes!

    • @NoNameAtAll2
      @NoNameAtAll2 2 года назад +1

      @Larma Kana why linus' cleanup didn't work?

    • @gmourao
      @gmourao 2 года назад

      Hummm. Tech potatoes. Yeah, maybe he is behind this article

    • @alanhilder1883
      @alanhilder1883 2 года назад

      Based on the semiconductor carbon as opposed to silicon... ;-)

  • @ElToroLibre
    @ElToroLibre 2 года назад +44

    As an FPGA Engineer it's incredibly exciting to hear FPGAs being talked about! Also, in some cases for ML applications FPGAs are being skipped over in favour of AI Accelerators (TPU, GroqChip, Cerebras, SambaNova, etc) in order to replace clusters of GPUs.

    • @ghostmexi007
      @ghostmexi007 2 года назад

      Arent fpga chip used widely for plc aren't they?

    • @ElToroLibre
      @ElToroLibre 2 года назад

      @@ghostmexi007 From my limited understanding of PLCs they are highly specialised devices and are not FPGAs, but are actually microprocessors that execute Ladder Logic programs. They can have large amount of dedicated I/O, ADCs, DACs, and different communication interfaces. Some PLCs may have some amount of switching fabric or some other kind of programmable glue logic, but I would not consider them to be true FPGAs.

    • @ghostmexi007
      @ghostmexi007 2 года назад

      @@ElToroLibre interesting thought they would be consider an FPGA seeing them as reprogramable cpus and the integrated logic circuit by the nature of the definition of an fpga well thanks for sharing this knowledge

    • @RamyWarda
      @RamyWarda 2 года назад +1

      What you do is really cool. I'm going on an FPGA/verilog rabbit hole after reading these comments from FPGA engineers. Starting to regret my BS in infotech... haha

    • @ElToroLibre
      @ElToroLibre 2 года назад +1

      @@RamyWarda This is still something you can do as a hobby! Depending on your experience you could start with SystemVerilog (as this is supposed to be closest to C) and a cheap development board, a number of them are well supported with lots of example projects to learn from. Some of them have displays, USB, buttons/switches, GPIO pins, VGA, HDMI or other audio/video output, etc. Even LTT have done videos of FPGAs used as retro game emulators! (Look for: "The Best Way To Play Retro Games?" by ShortCircuit). If you're feeling brave after learning a little bit about FPGAs you will have a great foundation to dive deeper into designing ASICs :D

  • @awgmax
    @awgmax 2 года назад +78

    A good analogy would be, general CPUs are a toolbox, they can make many different products, and ASIC's are a production line, they make 1 product, but they make a lot of it , fast, and accurately.

    • @dennisfahey2379
      @dennisfahey2379 2 года назад

      And ASICs can go wide / parallel doing many things concurrently. Only multicore CPUs can process two threads in the same clock cycle. GPU's do many independent calculations in the same clock. This is what the CUDA cores are about - concurrency. This sort of loops back to LTT's recent analysis of the RTX3090 vs the CMP processor. They were related but not identical chips. If you were to look at the dataflow through each you would see custom lgic specifically added for graphics on one and AI on there other. Linus was spot on when he said the two markets had diverged AND could support independent chips due to the volume. The original NVIDIA Tesla's were really just relabelled GPU's with a manufacturing test mode plus API that flattened out that tremendous number crunching for general purpose vs graphics specifics. AI is getting really interesting in a similar way.

    • @Roxor128
      @Roxor128 2 года назад +1

      And building on that analogy, and FPGA is a 3D printer. You can make many different things with it and you get some degree of automation, but they're better at making certain classes of objects than others.

  • @N0E3
    @N0E3 2 года назад +40

    I've been an FPGA Engineer for 10 years. They really are great chips. You can pretty much do whatever you want in one, it just depends on how much time and money you want to spend 😉

    • @pascal7947
      @pascal7947 2 года назад +2

      Well FPGAs usually only have reconfigurable digital hardware, so everything analogue is in fixed parts like in a Microcontroller/SoC.
      Also chips for space or CERN need special considerations for radiation which make FPGAs unviable.

    • @ElToroLibre
      @ElToroLibre 2 года назад +1

      @@pascal7947 Radiation hardened FPGAs do exist from manufacturers such as Xilinx and Microsemi, and they have been used in applications related to space and particle physics. In regards to analog design, there is also the less popular FPAA (Field Programmable Analog Array), which I have only come across once about a decade ago.

    • @dennisfahey2379
      @dennisfahey2379 2 года назад +1

      Spot on. They are inefficient, slower, hotter and more costly. Its an artifact of their versatility and preset chip layout. Still, for where they fit that are really useful. If the final product can handle the cost premium its a fine go to market choice.

  • @NightMotorcyclist
    @NightMotorcyclist 2 года назад +8

    Chips that do one thing really really well... brings back the promises of PhysX dedicated cards prior to nVidia's purchase.

    • @Liminal.Headspace
      @Liminal.Headspace 2 года назад

      Still have one laying around. Ageia was ahead of their time and it ruined them.

    • @NightMotorcyclist
      @NightMotorcyclist 2 года назад

      @@Liminal.Headspace I was so excited and tempted to buy one when they were released after seeing their booth at a tech show in NYC at the Javits Center (not sure why there hasn't been one since then and i'm talking long before the pandemic). Then the reviews came out and the lack of software that would make use of it just turned me off.

    • @Liminal.Headspace
      @Liminal.Headspace 2 года назад +1

      @@NightMotorcyclist It was an absolute waste of money almost 15 years ago. PhysX itself never went far. Ray tracing is where things are at, hopefully it'll get cheaper and better by the year.
      An actual dedicated ray tracing unit would be better than cramming it in an overtaxed GPU.

  • @AttilaAsztalos
    @AttilaAsztalos 2 года назад +13

    Well yes but actually no. FPGAs are simultaneously between ASICs and CPUs and also on the other side, past CPUs - yes, an FPGA might be used as simply a task-specific circuit (like an ASIC except reconfigurable to do something else), but the larger FPGAs are also complex enough to behave like a CPU, ANY CPU that fits within the resources they have; and in that sense, they are MORE general than a specific CPU. Not only can they run software like a CPU does, you get to choose WHICH CPU you want them to emulate.

  • @LundBrandon
    @LundBrandon 2 года назад +8

    Currently making a generic cpu on an FPGA. Meaning it can be 16-, 32-, 64-, 128-, etc- bit. So I could theoretically have a 1 terabit or more cpu if the chip was big enough.

  • @Kelble
    @Kelble 2 года назад +29

    As an FPGA Engineer myself specializing in VHDL, I always find it soo cool to be a topic of discussion in your videos!

    • @nashs.4206
      @nashs.4206 2 года назад +7

      I took an FPGA class in my school and we used Xilinx Vivado as the IDE. If that class taught me anything, it is to respect you FPGA engineers because oh man, I had such a hard time dealing with Vivado haha.

    • @Kelble
      @Kelble 2 года назад +1

      @@nashs.4206 that’s what we work with 😉

    • @Schulzenberger
      @Schulzenberger 2 года назад +3

      @@nashs.4206 Vivado taught me what the word frustration really means

    • @nashs.4206
      @nashs.4206 2 года назад +3

      @@Schulzenberger Haha 100%
      The number of times where I literally made NO changes, and yet when I regenerate the bitstream and load the code to my FPGA and somehow it works is mind-boggling lol. I genuinely wonder how any hardware designed in Vivado works at all!

    • @benjib2691
      @benjib2691 2 года назад +2

      @@nashs.4206 I never used Vivado but I used Quartus Prime, and it's the same thing. The core program works rather well, but the simulator Modelsim is broken. It crashes randomly, which is kind of frustrating when editing code.

  • @cohenturley2049
    @cohenturley2049 2 года назад +30

    doritos still are the best chips

    • @realhkv4082
      @realhkv4082 2 года назад

      No blue lays are best 🤡

    • @spiddyman0079
      @spiddyman0079 2 года назад

      @@realhkv4082 blue?

    • @DeeezNuts
      @DeeezNuts 2 года назад

      @@spiddyman0079 i think he/she means ketchup lays

    • @spiddyman0079
      @spiddyman0079 2 года назад

      @@DeeezNuts but thats red

    • @DeeezNuts
      @DeeezNuts 2 года назад

      @@spiddyman0079 Im pretty sure ketchup lays is blue

  • @robertsteel3563
    @robertsteel3563 2 года назад +6

    0:05 Did Linus just burn himself, or...?

  • @kyles8524
    @kyles8524 2 года назад +7

    its funny how he talked about emulation consoles, I was about to say they can be programmed to run identical to the retro systems architecture

    • @saricubra2867
      @saricubra2867 2 года назад +1

      Modern day CPUs have insane IPC that FPGAs aren't needed. Taking Nintendo aside, current consoles are all x86 based

    • @kyles8524
      @kyles8524 2 года назад +4

      @@saricubra2867 you still dont understand ,its not about the IPC, some games no matter what computer you use have issues with certain games games, especially certain graphical issues.thats what FGPA chips in these emulation consoles were used for. they are infact needed if you want true emulation, as for emulating it on another computer games run fine its just not always perfect.FPGA chips fix this. stuff with FPGA chips are also expensive and know people will pay the price for a true match for match emulation

    • @karehaqt
      @karehaqt 2 года назад

      @@kyles8524 Software emulation can be just as good, people should stop shitting on it just because it's software.

    • @kyles8524
      @kyles8524 2 года назад +2

      @@karehaqt FPGA chips just ensure accuracy ,most games run accurate but some dont because of the software emulation.Its all common knowledge when it comes to emulation

  • @nathanrussell2158
    @nathanrussell2158 2 года назад +39

    Love it when professor Linus shows up. These are my favorites.

  • @AgentOrange96
    @AgentOrange96 2 года назад +10

    3:35 With the caveat that they're volatile. If they lose power, they lose their programming. Generally they'll be paired with a ROM chip to program them on power-up. Since an FPGA doesn't emulate, but becomes the logic circuit you've built, you can turn an FPGA into a CPU if you want. (I've designed CPUs for FPGAs) But it's surreal because it's like, I have a CPU here! *unplugs it* and now that CPU is gone!

    • @ElToroLibre
      @ElToroLibre 2 года назад +3

      If you don't want to lose your program, then Flash-based FPGAs don't have this problem!

    • @AgentOrange96
      @AgentOrange96 2 года назад

      @@ElToroLibre Ooh! I didn't know about those! That's neat!

  • @mabbasi_of
    @mabbasi_of 2 года назад +3

    what? no !!!
    As Electronics Engineer in Microelectronics I can clearly say that these information are wrong. To say, there is FPGA, ASICS and CPU is totally wrong information.
    A CPU is just a type of a device, such as GPU, or even 555. It is not a category of hardware as the other two.
    ASICS is the next step after prototyping with a FPGA, so you cannot change it. A CPU can be made with an FPGA, You can build a softcore in an FPGA, as well in an ASICS device. So, how the categorization in the video is made is very weird. I am really shocked !

    • @jierenzheng7670
      @jierenzheng7670 2 года назад

      Does that mean that we can make modular CPUs and GPUs with FPGA?

    • @mabbasi_of
      @mabbasi_of 2 года назад +2

      @@jierenzheng7670 yes of course. It iw how we prototype things like that. In fact, you can find cores of old CPUs available on line on opencores and use directly. You can also find miners and other things.

  •  2 года назад +6

    There is also new types of gates to calculate AI with analog circuit. There are bunch of resistors and ADC convertors inside ASIC.

  • @AniRayn
    @AniRayn 2 года назад +1

    4:59 - Sounds like the title of an isekai anime.

  • @saiyancatszx2
    @saiyancatszx2 2 года назад +5

    As FPGA Engineer, I glad FPGA is getting more attention in tech media.

  • @CastleMisha
    @CastleMisha 2 года назад

    3:29 lol 🤣🤣😂 sounded like Linus has some electrical remanufacturing at that time stamp

  • @jajssblue
    @jajssblue 2 года назад +6

    Great video, but would've been awesome to mention the time or frequency domains that each of these are capable of working in because that's a big difference.

  • @XxthemonkeyxX
    @XxthemonkeyxX 2 года назад

    Really nobody else died at the kid with legos? That shit killed me

  • @TheSulross
    @TheSulross 2 года назад +1

    as a software programmer that acquired a couple of FPGA boards to learn to program them, the thing am seeing of note is that multiple FPGA digital circuits can be designed to run in parallel while based on the same clock signal. Depending on problem to be solved the FPGA manner of doing parallelism could be very powerful. An embedded CPU executing software instructions is very versitle and easy to program with lanfuages like C. But it's ability for parallelism is limited by how many cores the CPU has, which for embedded will typically be one, two, or four. Plus those cores need to really be programmed with some sort of OS kernel that facilitates managing different task for execution on the different cores. And those task need to be coordinated to work effectively and correctly, which can be the trickier aspect of multi-programming.
    Whereas the parallelism one designs into an FPGA is just inately what it does - it may require a means of feeding in input data and a means of collecting output data, but it doesn't have to be managed for parallel task execution in the way a multi-core CPU does.
    Of course, at the end of the day, my primary interest in FPGAs is to learn how to implement vintage computer CPUs :-)

  • @EyesOfByes
    @EyesOfByes 2 года назад +3

    Best clickbait of the month

  • @OutOfNameIdeas2
    @OutOfNameIdeas2 2 года назад +4

    Asics are what the big cryoto mining companies are using.

    • @harrkev
      @harrkev 2 года назад

      ASICs are what YOU are using. If you have a cell phone, there are ASICs in there for the radio stuff (WiFi, Cell, Bluetooth, etc.). If you have a computer, there are ASICs in there for such things as power management, clock control, etc.. Really, ASIC just means any piece of silicon designed to do a specific job (IE not a CPU, and not discrete logic). FPGA is a chip that does nothing, but you can program it to do any job that an ASIC can do.

    • @beezanteeum
      @beezanteeum 2 года назад

      …Don't forget YLOD ( P h a t t ) PS3 (which can emulate PS2 using hardware accelerator), Apple Silicon, and Google Tensor

  • @traxeonic3600
    @traxeonic3600 2 года назад

    I think I want see Anthony get deep and dark with all the FPGA retro gaming now.

  • @bosstroll9019
    @bosstroll9019 2 года назад +2

    This video brought to you by Doritos®️

  • @harrkev
    @harrkev 2 года назад +2

    A better way to explain this: A CPU can do ANYTHING. But the down side is that it is always saying "What do I do next?" It does that step, and then says: "OK. What is my next step?" The whole instruction fetch and decode stuff takes up space and time (especially in the case of a cache miss). Also, a CPU does one thing at a time (only one ALU). Yes, I am ignoring superscaler. An ASIC or FPGA is pre-wired to know what to do, and it can also do multiple things at once. Need to multiply two lists of 100 numbers? A CPU will have to do that one at a time. You can put 100 multipliers on an ASIC or FPGA (yes, it will be big), and it can do them all at once.
    An ASIC is great of you are making thousands or millions. The NRE can be a million dollars or more. But they will run the fastest and be cheapest per unit. An FPGA will be more expensive, slower, and more power, but a hobbyist could easily make a design with just one of them, using free tools.
    Yes, I design ASICs for a living.

  • @soyunpimpollo1622
    @soyunpimpollo1622 2 месяца назад +1

    FPGAs engineers... Know the big real engineers of ASICs, where the word "digital" is only a whisper.

  • @Endangereds
    @Endangereds 2 года назад

    Why Cell phone screens can't be repurposed for DIY projects? we might reduce e-waste a little by using the screens for Raspberry pi and Arduino etc projects. or a small screen for Laptops or Desktops, just for showing some specifically needed functionality on a small screen.

  • @vineetkumarbharti2633
    @vineetkumarbharti2633 2 года назад

    Have you heard of that new adaptive transistor technology Linus? With this transistors can change the architecture by changing their direction electrically. That mean a zen 3 core can be changed to RDNA2 core or even next gen IP like Zen4. P cores can be changed to E cores. This things takes specialised chips one step further. Even ahead of modern CPU. This can literally save silicon waste.

  • @notmuch_23
    @notmuch_23 2 года назад +1

    This video made me think of what may be a strange question: whatever happened to math coprocessors?

  • @duglasspolding1380
    @duglasspolding1380 Год назад +1

    Thank you for the video, but I also wanted to hear more industrial applications of fpga except game consoles)

  • @TheUAProdigy
    @TheUAProdigy 2 года назад +2

    I wish we had dedicatated ASICS for raytracing.

  • @TomsLife9
    @TomsLife9 6 месяцев назад +1

    3:30 the only thing I'd add is that FPGAs are not persistent, aka, they are volatile in that they need to be re-flashed if power is lost. Many FPGA boards will have a local non-volatile flash memory that automatically reprograms them on startup, or something more fancy like an MPSoC will use commands in the OS to reprogram

  • @yackablejohnson1485
    @yackablejohnson1485 2 года назад +1

    The first machine I ever built ran Windows 98 SE2 and an AMD K6-III with 256MB dual channel ram. I didn't even have an exhaust fan. I could edit videos, edit audio, browse online, be on IRC, DL from Newsgroups, and have emulation games (NESten) running at the same time. So I don't know what you're talking about saying that modern CPUs can do the things older CPUs couldn't? It's just a ridiculous statement. What you could say is software has evolved to the point that it requires a modern CPU to really multitask the way you did on the previous generation. That would have been honest and made sense.

    • @saricubra2867
      @saricubra2867 2 года назад

      Not only that, is the absolutely ridiculous IPC increase specially with Sandy Bridge, Haswell and Zen 1.
      Your K6 processor would struggle or be basically useless for music production, it would choke extremely hard, maybe the entire system would freeze.
      I run Android games on my 9 year old laptop with my Intel Core i7-4700MQ quad core processor, why? because it's waaaay faster than the Qualcomm octa core ARM chip from my current phone despite the difference on instruction sets. Massive difference on frequency and Haswell IPC is still good and AVX2 instructions are helping me.
      64 bit instructions are huge, and 16GB of RAM is enough for lossless high definition video, unlike the K6 era (extremely crappy resolution compression and framerates).
      Things changed a lot since Core 2 Duo.
      The fact that you could do something back then is impressive, but would be extremely terrible and rough by modern standards.

  • @anya012
    @anya012 2 года назад +1

    If it can only a single program then what good is it.Its worse than my 20 year old cpu

  • @fmh357
    @fmh357 2 года назад

    "Like that time I washed down a mentos with a bottle of pepsi." Loved it.

  • @historicplacesoforlandoflo4800
    @historicplacesoforlandoflo4800 2 года назад

    I thought this video was about the Florida professional Golf association

  • @BThings
    @BThings 2 года назад +1

    FPGAs could be a neat way to learn about historical computer systems. You could emulate gaming consoles, obviously, but I'm guessing you could also emulate other types of computers from history, like 8-bit PCs, or even early computers like the ENIAC or UNIVAC systems.

  • @monsterhunter445
    @monsterhunter445 2 года назад +3

    Do microcontroller vs microprocessor next please

    • @hjups
      @hjups 2 года назад +1

      The history of the naming can create confusion, but "microprocessor" just means CPU today (the micro part used to mean something when computers were the size of buildings, but not since everything scaled down to the chip level - like in the past 30 years).
      So really it's microcontroller vs process.
      A microcontroller is essentially a light weight CPU for embedded applications (toasters, dishwashers, etc.). Since they are for embedded applications, they're more like a system on chip with memory, "storage", and I/O on the same chip that is soldered to a board. One of their main staples is that they usually don't run a traditional OS, and only run one specialized application. They also are much slower but in exchange use less power and cost a lot less (you can get some microcontrollers for $0.20, that only use 0.01W, but runs at less than 1 MHz and has 128 bytes of memory).

    • @harrkev
      @harrkev 2 года назад

      Microprocessor: A CPU. Needs a bunch of stuff outside to be added (storage, memory, IO, etc.).
      Microcontroller: A CPU with almost everything that you need built-into it. You can easily have a "one chip" system where a microcontroller can have the code on-board to blink an LED or send and receive data over a serial port with practically no other parts. You find those in things like washing machines, microwaves, remote controls, etc. And because you have to build all of that stuff into one die, they are lower speed/capability and a separate CPU. But they are useful for a LOT of stuff.

  • @BengalBoy16
    @BengalBoy16 2 года назад +1

    You're a good-looking chap, Linus. Don't put yourself down

  • @HokgiartoSaliem
    @HokgiartoSaliem 2 года назад +1

    Some camera like from Blackmagic also use FPGA and can be upgraded with more function in the feature.
    Them problem with minner is they really one if sometimes minning is not good, they just resell the device easly. ASIC is not easy to resell.

  • @1steditiongamer276
    @1steditiongamer276 2 года назад +1

    Sitting somewhere between an ASIC and CPU is not better than a CPU.

  • @LinuxinaBit
    @LinuxinaBit 2 года назад +1

    Well we've hit the end of times... Grammarly is sponsoring LTT videos...

  • @jierenzheng7670
    @jierenzheng7670 2 года назад +1

    In that case, can we make a FPGA "GPU" with modular RAM/parts?

  • @SeraNeph
    @SeraNeph 2 года назад +1

    I can't wait for AMD Ryzen to include FPGA ever since they successfully acquired Xilinx. Since FPGAs are very popular for seamless gaming emulation, maybe FPGA is the key to finally emulate the PS3, the hardest console to flawlessly emulate. With Ryzen and FPGA, development for RPCS3 will be done in a jiff.

  • @219GeorgiaRoseXxX
    @219GeorgiaRoseXxX 2 года назад +1

    what if you make a mega cpu with both of the chips in the video

  • @tdata545
    @tdata545 2 года назад +1

    NO LOVE FOR MIPS IN THE MENTIONS, EH. I see you PSP processor. I SEE YOU. :'(

  • @mrfoodarama
    @mrfoodarama 2 года назад +1

    Imagine if Satoshi Nakamoto was really Nvidia... Hmmm...

  • @MathQOfQ
    @MathQOfQ 2 года назад +1

    Exciting possibilities, and that's why AMD bought up Xilinx.

  • @mavfan1
    @mavfan1 2 года назад +1

    Could Linus have done this video without his arms?

  • @JeffHorne
    @JeffHorne 2 года назад +1

    Didn’t you just say in a video a few days ago that turning an old PC into a router was faster than a traditional router? Does the same logic not apply to switches?

  • @ClayWheeler
    @ClayWheeler 2 года назад

    RUclips servers are using a combination of both ASIC CPUs and GPUs at the same time.
    At the time of writing this comment, there's no end user CPU or GPU that can Transcode VP9 or AV1 video codec.
    Even 12900K or Threadripper or Xeon or RTX 3090 Ti cannot transcode VP9 & AV1 video codec which is widely used by RUclips. And Netflix as well.
    Oh, and the RUclips's ASIC CPU and GPU are only running at less than 1.5 Ghz but with Gazillion amounts of Cores.

  • @casedistorted
    @casedistorted 2 года назад

    Oooof Grammarly is a BS monthly subscription based system. Not going to pay for that when it should be a pay once and be done kind of service, especially if it's just something you use for typing. Now EVERYTHING wants you to pay these stupid subscriptions instead of just buying once and being over it. I hope they do a secret shopper on Grammarly tbh.

  • @rodrigodemais
    @rodrigodemais 2 года назад +1

    I can't believe I lived to see an Innovus screenshot on an LMG video 😂

  • @JuraIbis
    @JuraIbis 2 года назад +1

    Werent Pentiums FPGA at some point? I've heard the term before.

  • @lmaooxdd3899
    @lmaooxdd3899 2 года назад +1

    Me omw to buy cyberpunk 2077 chip

  • @matthewsylvester9103
    @matthewsylvester9103 2 года назад +5

    That's so strange, legit I am taking a course on FPGA's right now and I open techquickie to see this haha.

  • @Videoman2000
    @Videoman2000 2 года назад

    And FPGAs did a special kind of programming, and programming thinking, so you cannot use your general app programmer to do it. So you need special programmers with twisted brains like I am.

  • @jstagzsr
    @jstagzsr 2 года назад

    fpga? is that was you yell every time you drop a pga cpu and bend or break a pin? FUCKIN PGA!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • @burningzombiez
    @burningzombiez 2 года назад +1

    Took me 35 hours of programing in Quartus (System Verilog HDL) to write a program that draws a line onto a DE1_SoC Development board (I'm studying Electrical Engineering in college). All of that work just to draw and clear a line onto a VGA output. Ugh that is the struggle with FPGA's they are a pain to code bc everything runs at the same time (unless you govern it by a clock, but still everything inside the always_ff @(posedge clk) still runs simultaneously.

    • @ElToroLibre
      @ElToroLibre 2 года назад

      If you want your code to run sequentially you would use a state machine, really just a case statement in a clocked process. You could also use a counter and conditional statements inside a clocked process to decide when lines of code run. But really you do want as many functions as possible to run in parallel without being blocked or having to wait, so pipelining and dataflow is very important.

  • @wallmenis
    @wallmenis 2 года назад

    i would say that you are wrong on this one guys. A cpu IS in fact, an asic. It has static non-reroutable logic gates as well and while they can do a lot of tasks, each task is done through an instruction set command that doesnt interfere with the logic gate connections, just like how the rest of the asic chips do. An FPGA chip though, can reroute its logic gates to simulate a custom processor or a completely different system, granted there are enough logic games.

  • @matismf
    @matismf 2 года назад

    Are FGPAs like Legos to the extent that, if one gets dropped on the floor and somebody steps on it, the neighbors will get free language lessons? Or are they not quite that much like Legos???

  • @maartenkeus8627
    @maartenkeus8627 2 года назад +1

    Would be pretty cool if you have like a CS:GO CPU for eSports, doesn't even run Windows, just CSGO
    (Don't know if that's possible, not 100% serious)

    • @baranoid
      @baranoid 2 года назад +1

      i think even if it was possible at all, they would have to be version locked to run one and only one version of the game. if an update came along you'd have to make new ones and the old ones are just e-waste

  • @harrysnell8971
    @harrysnell8971 2 года назад +1

    Datacentre ML and consumer retro consoles is a fairly limited selection of what FPGAs are used for (and probably a limited section of the market too). They are used a lot for moving around lots of data, like in LTE towers or in high end cameras/video switches etc. They also get used for glue logic and controllers because their timing is very controllable

  • @jamesmnguyen
    @jamesmnguyen 2 года назад

    I used FPGAs at my university to build custom circuits in software, then send the schematic to the fpga and test our design in real life.

  • @thebosstre
    @thebosstre 2 года назад +1

    I to also like potato chips

  • @oes2546
    @oes2546 2 года назад

    They should ramp up the ASIC production for mining by ALOT if they really are better than GPU-s at it then. Why aren't they? They could usurp a shitton of the money that Nvidia/Radeon cards are making on miners now. Heck, it would make more sense for Nvidia/AMD to make a new fab for ASIC's for mining than GPU's, because it would free up more GPU's for gaming than a new GPU fab would produce. But I get it's not that simple...

  • @__--JY-Moe--__
    @__--JY-Moe--__ 2 года назад

    here we go folks! 10 more miles! we can do this! burn those buns!! were almost there!! feel the burn!! stretch it out!!

  • @thienlo
    @thienlo 2 года назад

    FPGA is fun. You can design your own CPU or any system by programming FPGA before actually making an ASIC. There seems like less jobs available in this field than software programming.

  • @x1625
    @x1625 2 года назад

    He survived the Mentos with pepsi, but had it been Pop Rocks and Canada Dry...
    We wouldn't have Linus Gabriel Sebastian to kick around anymore.
    R.I.P. Mikey

  • @DocGould
    @DocGould 2 года назад

    CPUs and GPUs are Asics, they're just made for general purpose processing.

  • @DarkArachnid666
    @DarkArachnid666 5 месяцев назад

    I think in the future, the majority of computer hardware will just be firmware on one or more FPGAs and, instead of going out and buying, say, some expensive new RAM and going through the painstaking process of opening up the computer case and manually installing it, the average consumer will easily be able to purchase a downloadable firmware update from a reliable and trustworthy source.

  • @masterjaques4440
    @masterjaques4440 2 года назад

    This video could reach wider audiences if you just change it's name to "FPGA vs ASCIS" or "FPGA and ASIC explained"

  • @josephdtarango
    @josephdtarango 2 года назад

    If you would like to learn how to build your own ASIC or custom CPU look here
    www.cs.ucr.edu/~jtarango/cs122a_intro_to_fpgas.html
    And here are example ASICs
    www.cs.ucr.edu/~jtarango/publications.html

  • @wskinnyodden
    @wskinnyodden 2 года назад

    Tsc tsc tsc. You are obviously needing a jiggery pokery course and degree to improve your general PC hardware skills man! No jiggery pokery is a recipe for magic blue smoke leaving your chips all over the place!
    Jiggery pokery is essential to mess around with computer and electronics hardware man!

  • @cmdrglass5096
    @cmdrglass5096 2 года назад

    Why not do Crypto farming FPGAS instead of GPUs and CPUs then? You didnt go into how expensive the FPGAS were either ? Why was that ? Are they cheaper to make but more cost because that have no info on them ?

  • @MaverickBlue42
    @MaverickBlue42 2 года назад

    STEM is so 2010, it's STEAM nowadays, Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, & Math.....

  • @wartem
    @wartem 2 года назад

    Thank you grandma for sponsoring this video.

  • @thcoura
    @thcoura 2 года назад

    FPGA is not solution for everything. Hold your horses in your imagination. FPGAs have their own ecosystem with limitations and constraints. But mastering the technology you can do a lot for many projects and applications

  • @WilliamDuckett
    @WilliamDuckett 2 года назад

    Hear me out here... what about a line of Asic CPUs that are designed for graphics simulation software like Houdini? Need more power? Plug another Asic on a board?

  • @Shadow__X
    @Shadow__X 2 года назад +1

    You could also call FPGAs EEPASIC

  • @ErilynOfAnachronos
    @ErilynOfAnachronos 2 года назад

    Lol, got a Mentos ad right after Linus' Mentos joke. 😁

  • @allluckyseven
    @allluckyseven 2 года назад +2

    Wouldn't it be more efficient to have ASIC coprocessors to help a CPU? (Like the math coprocessors we had back in the 90s.)
    It sounds like we would have more powerful computers if we did that instead of adding another CPU, for instance.
    EDIT: I take that sound cards have their own ASICs to decode audio files, but I'm thinking something a bit more of general use.

    • @ethanblake4
      @ethanblake4 2 года назад +4

      That's basically what the PS3 did. It was fast, but very annoying to program for.

    • @hubertnnn
      @hubertnnn 2 года назад +5

      Main disadvantage of asic is that it cannot be reprogrammed, so the moment you need to change even a tiny thing it will become useless.
      And software is evolving way too fast for asics to make sense otside some very minor use cases.
      FPGA's on the other hand could be used like you said, I guess no one had the idea yet.

    • @hjups
      @hjups 2 года назад +2

      @@hubertnnn Intel had that idea back in 2014 (the HARP platform). It was a massive failure.
      FPGAs have too many problems to be used effectively in a general way. For one, they are very hard to program, and often require experienced engineers to hand craft the design. They also are not nearly as fast a CPUs (due to the configurable overhead), and they have a fixed resource limit / size (if the design doesn't fit, then it won't run).

    • @ern0plus4
      @ern0plus4 2 года назад +2

      @@ethanblake4 See Apple's M1 processor, it's packed with such functions (implemented as hardware, aka. ASIC): video encoder-decoder, ML engine, crypto, oh, and the largest one: video card. Anyway, a CPU is also an ASIC: hardwired to do a specific job - run machine code (but as it's very complex and runs program itself, we don't say this, it's not a typical ASIC).

    • @harrkev
      @harrkev 2 года назад

      @@hjups Another issue with the FPGA: they don't scale well over time with respect to software compatibility. You can run old 32-bit code from 20 years ago on a modern CPU. An FPGA would require re-compiling the entire design every time a new model of FPGA was made. If you wanted to sell code that could run on an FPGA, this would quickly turn into a support nightmare as the years go by and new FPGAs are put in new computers.

  • @adrianmillard6598
    @adrianmillard6598 2 года назад

    So you said a cheap network switch CPU can handle networking better than a desktop CPU, but in a video just recently you said a PC setup as a network switch could do it better than a switch...

  • @toastertag7536
    @toastertag7536 2 года назад

    Asics: if it were translated into German directly: Anwendungsspezifischer integrierter Schaltkreis.
    Checks out and Is correct.

  • @mokahless
    @mokahless 2 года назад

    1:45 - wow the irony here where just a couple videos ago, the video falsely claimed network switching in routers used the CPU. Ironic because you already had this video made.

  • @TowardsABetterHussain
    @TowardsABetterHussain Год назад

    So you mean we may be able to run current gen console games (PS6 or series x2 whatever will be present then) in future.
    Imagine a machine running exclusives from both consoles.

  • @rodovanra6783
    @rodovanra6783 2 года назад

    When I saw linus face i remembered to turn ON all my adblocks. Remember kids when ever you see the face of the Linus turn on your Adblock.

  • @lolnjeoglondajmejejplejlis3365
    @lolnjeoglondajmejejplejlis3365 2 года назад

    LOL? all this hard codding suck , imagine patching the hard wired code for a security reason.... imposible

  • @cybervoid8442
    @cybervoid8442 2 года назад

    Lmao this is just plain wrong. FPGAs and ASICs are at the opposite end of multipurpose-ability

  • @xorkatoss
    @xorkatoss 2 года назад

    soooooooo let's start a petition to make ASICs but for GAMING!! pretty much slap a bunch of them together and program them to do different gaming tasks while SUPPORTING your current GPU!
    think of them as a "GPU Helper" LOL!
    .
    .
    .
    .
    .
    f*ck my life

  • @relifed
    @relifed 2 года назад

    Why is the title and thumbnail of this video so clickbaity and non descriptive? Isn't this channel supposed to be a "wiki"?

  • @danielro1209
    @danielro1209 2 года назад +1

    What about a CPLD?