Heterogeneous Thinking

1965年，戈登·摩尔观察到，计算机芯片上的组件数量每18个月翻一番。近50年来，我们一直享受着这种呈指数级增长的计算机能力。这改变了社会，预示着今天的计算机时代。这种增长是建立在硬件和软件之间的基本契约基础上的，直到最近，这一契约还很少受到质疑。合同是：硬件可能会发生根本性的变化，但你在昨天的机器上运行的代码将在明天的机器上运行同样的代码--但运行速度会更快。硬件可能会改变，但对软件来说，它看起来是一样的，总是说同样的语言。这种通用的、一致的语言允许将软件开发与硬件开发分离。它允许程序员在软件开发上投入大量精力，并确信它将有几十年的使用。令人担忧的是，这份合同将开始分崩离析，危及对软件的大规模投资。不能再依靠技术来缩小规模和提供性能；摩尔定律的终结正开始迫使计算机设计采用新的方法。维护通用一致的语言契约的成本是巨大的。如果我们打破合同，开发专门的硬件，可能会有10,000倍的巨大性能提升。出于这个原因，很明显，在未来，硬件将越来越专业化和多样化。然而，目前还没有明确的编程和使用这种硬件的方法，目前的情况是，要么硬件进化因软件无法适应而停滞不前，要么软件无法利用硬件创新。这样的危机需要从根本上重新思考我们如何设计、编程和使用不同的系统。我们需要的是一种方法，将硬件从统一语言契约中解放出来，并将现有和未来的软件有效地连接到新兴的异质环境。这个项目提出了一种通过重新思考如何通过更灵活的语言接口连接软件和硬件来实现这一点的方法，该接口可以从一个处理器到另一个处理器。它允许现有软件使用未来的硬件，并允许硬件创新连接到机器人、增强现实和深度学习等新的和新兴的应用领域。如果成功，它将开启一个系统设计变革的时代，在这个时代，我们不是否认和害怕摩尔定律的终结，而是拥抱和利用它。

In 1965 Gordon Moore observed that the number of components on a computer chip doubles every 18 months. For almost 50 years we have enjoyed this exponentially increasing computer power. This has transformed society, heralding today's computer-age.This growth is based on a fundamental contract between hardware and software that until recently has rarely been questioned. The contract is: hardware may change radically "under the hood", but the code you ran on yesterday's machine will run just the same on tomorrow's - but even faster. Hardware may change, but it looks the same to software, always speaking the same language. This common, consistent language allows the decoupling of software development from hardware development. It has allowed programmers to invest significant effort in software development, secure in the knowledge that it will have decades of use. Alarmingly, this contract will begin to fall apart,putting in jeopardy the massive investment in software.The reason for the breakdown is due to the end of Moore's Law. Technology can no longer be relied upon to scale smaller and provide performance; the end of Moore's Law is beginning to force new approaches to computer design. The cost of maintaining the common consistent language contract is enormous. If we break the contract and develop specialised hardware, there is potentially a 10,000 x massive performance gain available. For this reason, it is clear thatin future, hardware will be increasingly specialised and heterogeneous. Currently, however, there is no clear way of programming and using such hardware.As it stands, either hardware evolution will stall as software cannot fit or software will be unable to exploit hardware innovation. Such a crisis requires a fundamental re-think of how we design, program and use heterogeneous systems. What we need is an approach that liberates hardware from the uniform language contract and efficiently connects existing and future software to the emerging heterogeneous landscape. This project proposes a way of doing this by re-thinking how we connect software and hardware by a more flexible language interface which can change from one processor to the next. It allows existing software to use future hardware and allows hardware innovation to connect to new and emerging applications areas such robotics, augmented reality and deep learning. If successful, it will usher in an era of change in systems design where, rather than deny and fear the end ofMoore's law, we embrace and exploit it.