SILICON? CHECK. HSA? CHECK. ALL DONE? WRONG!

TONY KING-SMITH EXECUTIVE VP MARKETING, IMAGINATION TECHNOLOGIES

| SILICON? CHECK. HSA: CHECK. ALL DONE? WRONG! | NOVEMBER 12, 2013 2

FROM MOBILE TO DATACENTER, IT ALL STARTS WITH THE SOC…

PowerVR GPU

Graphics processor

PowerVR VPU Video & Vision processor

Ensigma RPU

Radio comms processor

MIPS CPU General

processor

| SILICON? CHECK. HSA: CHECK. ALL DONE? WRONG! | NOVEMBER 12, 2013 3

THEN WE NEED A WAY FOR PROCESSORS TO COMMUNICATE…

PowerVR GPU

Graphics processor

PowerVR VPU Video & Vision processor

Ensigma RPU

Radio comms processor

MIPS CPU General

processor

Unified Memory

Flow Cloud

technologies

Bus Fabric

| SILICON? CHECK. HSA: CHECK. ALL DONE? WRONG! | NOVEMBER 12, 2013 4

AND WE WRITE APPS THAT USE ALL THESE RESOURCES – THANKS TO HSA

PowerVR GPU

Graphics processor

PowerVR VPU Video & Vision processor

Ensigma RPU

Radio comms processor

MIPS CPU General

processor

Unified Memory

The Cloud Bus Fabric

GPU Kernel

GPU Kernel

GPU Kernel

HW Kernel?

VLIW Kernel?

Clever HSA-aware app

| SILICON? CHECK. HSA: CHECK. ALL DONE? WRONG! | NOVEMBER 12, 2013 5

HOORAY!

ALL THE WORLD’S PROBLEMS SOLVED…?

| SILICON? CHECK. HSA: CHECK. ALL DONE? WRONG! | NOVEMBER 12, 2013 6

DREAM ON…

Many questions to be answered ‒ Portability ‒ Scalability ‒ Simulation & modelling ‒ Power Management

This is complex stuff – so it will take time to learn how to use it

But the most important question is: relevance to developers ‒ Will developers actually be able to use HSA? ‒ Does HSA address the needs of tomorrow’s applications?

| SILICON? CHECK. HSA: CHECK. ALL DONE? WRONG! | NOVEMBER 12, 2013 7

TARGET MARKETS

Fact: ‒ The highest volume market by unit volume is smartphones and tablets

Fact: ‒ Developers need to make money; they enjoy eating and drinking

Fact: ‒ More and more applications that are engaging consumers are on mobile

platforms from consumer to enterprise ‒ So that’s where more and more developers are focused

Fact: ‒ The SoC platforms being used in these markets are changing so rapidly,

optimising for any one platform makes little or no sense for developers

If HSA does not target these markets, it will only be relevant to high performance developers – a vital community, but a specialised one

HSA must address mobile platforms and developers!

IS HSA ADDRESSING THE RIGHT ONES?

| SILICON? CHECK. HSA: CHECK. ALL DONE? WRONG! | NOVEMBER 12, 2013 8

ALL PLATFORMS BY OS

0

500,000

1,000,000

1,500,000

2,000,000

2,500,000

3,000,000

2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017

OthersWindowsSymbianRIMMeeGoLiMo FoundationiOS/MacOSChromeBadaAndroid

Source: Imagination

| SILICON? CHECK. HSA: CHECK. ALL DONE? WRONG! | NOVEMBER 12, 2013 9

GPUS SCALE WITHIN ONE GENERATION

PERFORMANCE ENVELOPE GROWING WITH EACH SOC GENERATION

Mob

ile G

PU p

roce

ssin

g po

wer

(log

)

Time

12GFLOPs

2013

128GFLOPs

2014 2015

256GFLOPs

24GFLOPs

48GFLOPs

Widening GPU performance

envelope – but power budget remains static!

| SILICON? CHECK. HSA: CHECK. ALL DONE? WRONG! | NOVEMBER 12, 2013 10

PORTABILITY AND SCALABILITY

APIs are intended to aid portability ‒ But HSAIL isn’t the easiest thing to code with; neither is OpenCL,

or OpenGL ES, or…

Apps must now scale over a very broad range of performance at any given point in time ‒ Todays leading edge smartphones are tomorrow’s commodity

The reality is the numbers of developers actually skilled in using these APIs is relatively small compared to the much broader community ‒ So middleware is essential, e.g. games engines, UI engines, function libraries

We need to stimulate the middleware community to get traction for HSA Writing a portable, scalable app is an emerging art form!

CAN MORE THAN A HANDFUL OF DEVELOPERS HANDLE SCALABLE HETEROGENEOUS APPS?

| SILICON? CHECK. HSA: CHECK. ALL DONE? WRONG! | NOVEMBER 12, 2013 11

OTHER ISSUES ABOUND

Simulation and modeling ‒ Getting harder all the time! ‒ App understanding of the underlying SoC platform has increasingly

dramatic implications on system performance

Power management ‒ The application needs to control this, not just rely on the OS

Processing profiles are increasingly dynamic ‒ Dynamically varying voltage, clock, thermal ‒ Switching in and out of GPU and CPU cores; shared resources

If we’re not careful, we end up with the perfect solution that’s far too clever for mere mortals to use!

HOW WILL DEVELOPERS GET TO GRIPS WITH THE COMPLEXITIES OF HETEROGENEOUS PLATFORMS?

| SILICON? CHECK. HSA: CHECK. ALL DONE? WRONG! | NOVEMBER 12, 2013 12

CHALLENGING CONVENTIONAL WISDOM

Myth: Desktop apps will move to mobile ‒ No they won’t! Look at all the successful mobile apps… ‒ Mobile apps are different - touch-based, highly interactive,

and designed to scale across a wide range of platforms

Myth: High performance apps will move to mobile ‒ Why should they? They’re best suited to cloud servers

Myth: Cloud computing will kill serious computing on mobile ‒ No, they will co-exist, and the smart money is on those that use both

HSA must not ignore the power and influence of mobile platforms

OR…WHERE’S THE MONEY?

| SILICON? CHECK. HSA: CHECK. ALL DONE? WRONG! | NOVEMBER 12, 2013 13

HOW DEVELOPER COMMUNITIES ARE PARTITIONED…

Mobile App Developers

Immediate response Always available

Instant/short timeframe

Cloud Server App Developers

Big data QoS depends on link

Medium-long timeframe

| SILICON? CHECK. HSA: CHECK. ALL DONE? WRONG! | NOVEMBER 12, 2013 14

BUT THIS IS HOW IT WILL EVOLVE, AND QUICKLY…

Immediate response

Cloud-based analysis

Heterogeneous App Developers

Immediate response Always available

Instant to long timeframe

| SILICON? CHECK. HSA: CHECK. ALL DONE? WRONG! | NOVEMBER 12, 2013 15

SO IF YOU HAVE A GREAT LINK…

Immediate response

Cloud-based analysis

Heterogeneous App Developers

Immediate response Always available

Instant to long timeframe

| SILICON? CHECK. HSA: CHECK. ALL DONE? WRONG! | NOVEMBER 12, 2013 16

BUT IF IT’S A BIT DODGY…

Immediate response

Local analysis

Cloud-based analysis

Heterogeneous App Developers

Immediate response Always available

Instant to long timeframe

| SILICON? CHECK. HSA: CHECK. ALL DONE? WRONG! | NOVEMBER 12, 2013 17

OR DIES ALTOGETHER…

Immediate response

Local short and longer timframe analysis

Heterogeneous App Developers

Immediate response Always available

Instant to long timeframe

| SILICON? CHECK. HSA: CHECK. ALL DONE? WRONG! | NOVEMBER 12, 2013 18

CONCLUSIONS

HSA is great – but it must target both mobile and performance SoCs in order for it to be widely adopted

High volume mobile platforms will always be cost-sensitive ‒ So you can never assume high end capabilities will migrate onto them

Mobile platforms mean much more than smartphone app processors ‒ Data center computing will increasingly rely on low power SoC technologies derived from mobile ‒ Mobile chips will be used in ever broader markets ‒ The Internet of Things will be a key source of data essential for rich analytics – low cost, low power again

The best developers will go where the money is ‒ If HSA is to be successful, it must target volume markets, not start at the high end

Apps, not just SoCs, are going to be heterogeneous in many ways ‒ Partitioned across mobile and datacenter platforms, dynamically reconfiguring in response to environment