HSA and foundation membership growing rapidly

[piesquared]

HSA has picked up some new big members recently with 1 founding member yet to be named. Membership stands somewhere around 30 members with more coming in 2013. A huge part of the entire industry seems to be involved with the standard!

We have strong involvement form the best engineers and innovator from Apical, AMD, ARM, Arteris, Ceva, Codeplay, DMP, Fabric Engine, Imagination Technologies, LG, Marvell, MediaTek, MultiCoreWare, Qualcomm, Samsung, Sonic, ST, ST Ericsson, Symbio, Tensilica, TI, and Vivante all driving forward with single vision to drive innovation around heterogeneous computing.

I am also proud to say we have also started to attract some of best minds in academia to bring HSA to the next level. Feel good to be starting 2013 right.
Professor Simon McIntosh-Smith University of Bristol, Microelectronic Group
Professor Michael O’Boyle – University of Edinburgh Director of Institute for Computing Systems Architecture
Professor Sarita Adve – University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ( Like to thank Hans Boehm for introduce us to Professor Adve )
Professor JenqKuen Lee NTHU Programing Language Lab
Professor Yeh-Ching Chung NTHU Systems Software Lab

One last thing, I am also happy to report we['re] close on bringing our first specification to ratification: HSA Programmer Reference Guide. After it is ratified we will be making this spec public sometime in Q1/2013.

http://hsafoundation.com/

That reference guide will shed a lot of light on what's coming.

As for the final founding member, Microsoft?

 

[Idontcare]

Why would a founding member not want to be named? I find that really odd that Microsoft would hold itself out as an anonymous founding member. Not saying I don't believe it, just saying I can't fathom the rationale for it.

 

[piesquared]

Why would a founding member not want to be named? I find that really odd that Microsoft would hold itself out as an anonymous founding member. Not saying I don't believe it, just saying I can't fathom the rationale for it.

Why not? Samsung and Qualcomm never announced initially either. Maybe Microsoft is waiting for some upcoming announcement, like a console. I guess there could be a variety of reasons, for which you wouldn't know the rationale until an announcement is made.

IOW, not wanting to be named is not the same as not ready to be named?

BTW, I'm not saying definitively that the last founding member is MS, just speculating.

 

[inf64]

Future Xbox is likely to have HSA enabled APU inside so it's probably it IS Microsoft. Maybe they wait for official product launch.

 

[piesquared]

Future Xbox is likely to have HSA enabled APU inside to it's probably it IS Microsoft. Maybe they wait for official product launch.

Yeah that's my guess as well. With Sony now a member, perhaps PS4 is also HSA enabled?

 

[inf64]

Yeah that's my guess as well. With Sony now a member, perhaps PS4 is also HSA enabled?

Yep very probable too. All major players except NV and intel are members.

 

[ViRGE]

BTW, I'm not saying definitively that the last founding member is MS, just speculating.

Just so we're clear here, "Founder" is the highest membership tier. Anyone can become a founder at any time so long as they're invited (in essence making it a promotion from the Promoter tier). So there's no reason to believe that there are hidden members here; someone is a founder once they get invited and decide to pay $125K/year to become one.

 

[NTMBK]

2 star rating? Woah, that's some serious hostility for this thread.

 

[piesquared]

Just so we're clear here, "Founder" is the highest membership tier. Anyone can become a founder at any time so long as they're invited (in essence making it a promotion from the Promoter tier). So there's no reason to believe that there are hidden members here; someone is a founder once they get invited and decide to pay $125K/year to become one.

This suggests there is one founding member left to be named.

I think once the spec is ratified this quarter and the board seats full, then the founding membership will be full also.

Founder

Invitation Only

Governance:
Ratification of Final Specifications
Automatic place on the Board
Eligible to vote in election of Promoter Member to the Board of Directors
Eligible to vote in corporate matters
Eligible to vote for formation of Working Groups
Eligible to suggest Working Groups

Technical Working Groups:
Participation in the Technical Working Groups
Eligible to chair a Working Group
Participation in development of Conformance Test Suite
Eligible to vote in Working Group

Marketing Working Groups:
Participation in Marketing Working Groups
Eligible to vote in Working Group
Speaking and presenting on behalf of the HSA Foundation
Promotion in HSA Foundation PR, presentations, etc.
Opt-in marking of company products listed on the HSA Foundation website

Development and Conformance of Products:
Early access to Specifications
Submit product for conformance
Conformant products can use the API trademark
Develop license-free, royalty free products with HSA Technology
Access to HSAIL Tools
Access to the HSA Foundation private code repository
Access to Compliance Logo Program

 

[GreenChile]

Could someone please describe what HSA is and why it's important in layman terms?

 

[amdisstaying]

Could someone please describe what HSA is and why it's important in layman terms?

What is Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA)?

http://developer.amd.com/resources/...hat-is-heterogeneous-system-architecture-hsa/

 

[jvroig]

This suggests there is one founding member left to be named.
[image snipped]

While I suppose it's possible, I find it more likely (and probable) that it is simply a design (aesthetic) effect. The honeycomb style looks nice, and it would look imbalanced if they omitted one hexagon just because there are only 7 founders so far. Theorizing a "secret" or "yet-to-be-named" founder just because of a graphic layout (and no press release / text / direct indication / caption whatsoever) seems rather far-fetched.

 

[GreenChile]

What is Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA)?

http://developer.amd.com/resources/...hat-is-heterogeneous-system-architecture-hsa/

So does that boil down to a new programming language or new hardware designs to better integrate different systems or both of those combined? It's still not very clear to me. Sorry for being a little slow.

 

[Phynaz]

Since every other one of the companies mentioned is a hardware company, I'm skeptical that MS would be in that list.

 

[Idontcare]

Intel?

 

[amdisstaying]

HSA is not tied to any specific hardware.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5493/...ed-memory-for-cpugpu-in-2013-hsa-gpus-in-2014

http://images.anandtech.com/doci/5493/Screen Shot 2012-02-02 at 9.20.35 AM_575px.png

This year we got Graphics Core Next, but next year we'll see a unified address space that both AMD CPUs and GPUs can access (today CPUs and GPUs mostly store separate copies of data in separate memory spaces).

The unified address space is the key for HSA.

 

[MisterMac]

Intel?

More likely nVidia no?



What i don't understand is how the amd fans (pie,aten,isstaying etc) sees HSA as this glory THING for AMD.


I pretty much seem them doing good will work of the entire computing semiconductor sector - and help establish some groundrules\footprints.

How exactly does this make AMD products better than they are now - how does it increase the performance magicly?

I can't see how AMD in itself benefits from this - the entire industry might, but not AMD specifically.


IF it's a PR stunt - fine it's a awesome one.
But many AMD people seem to glorify this as more than what it actually is.

Can you explain this to me IDC?

 

[ViRGE]

So does that boil down to a new programming language or new hardware designs to better integrate different systems or both of those combined? It's still not very clear to me. Sorry for being a little slow.

At its core, it's a virtual ISA suitable for compilation down to architectures that contain both a CPU and a GPU.

 

[cytg111]

im guessing microsoft, cause it wouldnt be worth much on the desktop (windows-desktop) without some directx-ification.

 

[Idontcare]

More likely nVidia no?



What i don't understand is how the amd fans (pie,aten,isstaying etc) sees HSA as this glory THING for AMD.


I pretty much seem them doing good will work of the entire computing semiconductor sector - and help establish some groundrules\footprints.

How exactly does this make AMD products better than they are now - how does it increase the performance magicly?

I can't see how AMD in itself benefits from this - the entire industry might, but not AMD specifically.


IF it's a PR stunt - fine it's a awesome one.
But many AMD people seem to glorify this as more than what it actually is.

Can you explain this to me IDC?

Oh yeah, Nvidia does make much more sense now that you mention it.

I don't see what all the fuss is about with HSA, but I chalk that up to ignorance on my part.

 

[ViRGE]

How exactly does this make AMD products better than they are now

It doesn't improve the hardware, it improves the software. AMD is never going to out-fox Intel on the high-performance x86 front, so AMD needs to leverage the advantage they do have: GPUs.

Stream, OpenCL, C++ AMP, etc have yet to catch on with most developers because all of it still requires the GPU to be accounted for and programmed separately. With HSA, programmers are effectively programming against a single virtual ISA that covers both the CPU and the GPU, meaning they no longer have to explicitly program for the GPU. And that is how AMD intends to get programmers using the GPU, thereby allowing them to exploit their GPU performance advantage and outperform Intel.

 

[amdisstaying]

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-oracle-java,18090.html

"Oracle, AMD Agree on GPU-Accelerated Java
6:00 PM - October 7, 2012 by Wolfgang Gruener - source: EETimes

In an announcement made at JavaOne, Oracle and AMD confirmed that the two companies have created an OpenJDK project with the goal to run the JVM on GPUs.

Phil Rogers, AMD Corporate Fellow and president of the Heterogenous System Architecture (HAS) described "Project Sumatra", which will be led initially by Oracle's John Coomes, and said that the technology will be designed to work on discrete GPUs as well as heterogeneous CPU/GPU designs, such as AMD's APUs.

Oracle disclosed that it will be using its HotSpot JVM and the libraries from Java 8's Lambda project, which was published last year as a way to support Java programming in multicore environments. If a GPU is available in a system, Java code will be converted to OpenCL code and then run on the GPU. In a statement released to the press, Georges Saab, vice president of software development for the Java Platform Group at Oracle said: "We expect our work with AMD and other OpenJDK participants in Project 'Sumatra' will eventually help provide Java developers with the ability to quickly leverage GPU acceleration for better performance."

Sumatra may become available with the release of Java 8 in 2013."

 

[GreenChile]

At its core, it's a virtual ISA suitable for compilation down to architectures that contain both a CPU and a GPU.

Okay that helps clear it up a bit. Thanks.

 

[ShintaiDK]

The main problem is if nVidia and/or Intel doesnt back it. Then it wont turn universal and as such...and suffer the same fate as SSE5, SSE4a, 3Dnow! and so on. You aint gonna code/compile for a 17% and decreasing segment of the market.

Then the discussion if its better or not is purely secondary.

 

[cytg111]

unless they're allready doing it for playstations and xbox'es of course ..