标签: HSA

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) showcased a new swagger a few week's ago at AMD Fusion Developer Summit (AFDS) in Bellevue, Washington US. Weary of trudging through life as perennial second fiddle to Intel Corp., AMD outlined a bold new direction and displayed flexibility that may not have seemed possible just a few years ago. Two major announcements—the formation of a foundation to develop and support its Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) and a license deal to add an ARM Cortex A5 to handle security in future generations of its accelerated processing units —illustrated that it is in fact a new day at AMD. AMD is seeking to build an ecosystem around its open HSA to increase the number of developers using its APUs and profligate heterogeneous computing into the mainstream. "We have bet our company on heterogeneous computing," said Lisa Su, senior vice president and general manager of AMD's global business units. "We believe this from the core of who we are—that this is how we can change the world, that this is the future of computing." Not to be outdone in the gambling analogy department, Mark Papermaster, AMD's chief technology officer, later told attendees that the company was "doubling down" on its strategy to leverage its IP in flexible and more agile ways to deliver value to customers. AMD has already shipped some 40 million APUs since the first was released in early 2011. Su said 11 of the top 12 OEMs are currently shipping APU-based platform. But heterogeneous computing in its current form is difficult to program. AMD estimates there are perhaps 100,000 developers with the skills and experience required to develop applications for parallel computing, which requires multiple languages and separate versions of a program. These developers are such a rare breed that they are sometimes referred to as "ninjas," said Tom Milloy, senior vice president and chief architect at Adobe Systems Inc., who delivered a keynote address at AFDS. AMD's goal is to increase the ranks of ninjas—or, more accurately, to decrease the complexity of heterogeneous computing programming to the point where one need not be thought of as something as grandiose as a ninja to do it well. According to Su, AMD, largely through the HSA Foundation, wants to make APUs as easy to program as mainstream CPUs, thus increasing the size of the pool of developers who can use them. The bottleneck, she said, is that this point mostly in software, something that the HSA Foundation—which thus far also includes Texas Instruments, ARM, MediaTek and Imagination Technology—aims to alleviate. AMD's vision, which began taking shape last year when the company took the bold step of opening up the architecture, is to drive the creation of open source APIs while at the same time enabling AMD and other chip vendors to offer proprietary hardware under the hood. AMD expects HSA member companies to bring to create developer tools, software developer kits, libraries, documentation, and more. "We want to be very clear on a standards front that we want to drive an open ecosystem," Su said. A bold vision for change Credit AMD with articulating a bold vision for change. The company, which in the past has been criticized for lack of decisiveness and direction, has put its stake in the ground. "To me, that was the most impressive thing," said Jim McGregor, founder and principal analyst at Tirias Research. "Instead of just trying to be a player in the market, AMD is saying, 'This is the direction we are going in and this is what we are going to build.' " Nathan Brookwood, principal of Insight64, also applauded the formation of the HSA Foundation—and the participation of several significant firms. Brookwood said AMD's heterogeneous computing push has its roots in the company's 2006 acquisition of ATI Technologies Inc., which brought the company the graphics technology now found in APUs. "AMD's competitive position had eroded," Brookwood said. "If this can put them on the map and cause them to become more relevant, good for AMD and good for the industry." Brookwood said he believes the participation of other firms in the HSA Foundation will cause developers to pay more attention to it. "I think it will cause developers to take it more seriously, both because of the size of the potential base of equipment and because it's no longer just an AMD dream but a shared vision." AMD made it clear that the founding partners of the HSA Foundation are just the beginning. The company hinted that it expects further momentum for the foundation in coming weeks and months, when more hardware vendors and, eventually, software firms, academic institutions and software developers are expected to join up. "It will grow from here like a pyramid," Papermaster said. Of course, AMD isn't the only company offering chips that combine both graphics and processors in the same integrated device. Intel, ever AMD's nemesis, has got that, too. But as Su noted, Intel makes its marketing hay primarily through brute force CMOS scaling, driving to new technology nodes much faster than its rivals. AMD, which is now fabless, simply cannot even attempt to keep pace. According to Su, pushing through new technology nodes yields incremental improvements in microprocessor technology. A fundamental change to the computer programming model offers far more bang for the buck, she said. "We are trying to change the way computing is done," Su said. Later, she added, "CMOS scaling is not going to continue forever." Su, who joined AMD earlier this year after four years at Freescale Semiconductor, stressed that AMD's mindset has changed under Rory Read, who took over as president and CEO of the company last year. For years, Su said, AMD's mindset had been that it was acceptable to be the No. 2 players in microprocessors. "That's not okay anymore," Su said. AMD has good reason to want to change the discussion from the old Intel versus AMD dynamic. Intel has held a dominant position over its smaller rival for many years, with market share typically of 80 to 85 percent. But the new direction also underscores a new competitive reality. With Windows 8, the first version of the OS to support ARM-based devices, and with both AMD and Intel seeking to expand their presence in the mobile world—where ARM's architecture dominates—the competitive landscape for AMD means more than just Intel. "As long as AMD is going to continue to offer x86 products for PCs and servers, there's no way they aren't going to compete with Intel," Brookwood said. "But they are taking a very different approach."