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AMD Fusion and the HSA Revolution (What is, Discussion and Info thread)

14K views 87 replies 37 participants last post by  eulerpc 
#1 ·
Latest news: HSA's performance benefits are clear - SEE BENCHMARKS
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I think it's about time I create a thread like this to answer some questions about HSA before I annoy some people with my very sensationalist attitude regarding AMD's future with them.

Quote:


At a time when cracks are appearing in Moore's Law and the costs of shrinking fab processes continue to skyrocket, an industry that wants to keep accelerating compute capabilities must turn increasingly to optimizing efficiency. Ultimately, this is what GPGPU and HSA enable. By old methods, how much would a CPU need to evolve in order to facilitate a 5x performance gain? Now, such gains are possible simply through hardware and software vendors adopting an end-to-end platform such as HSA. No pushing the envelope of lithography physics. No new multi-billion-dollar factories. Just more efficient utilization of the technologies already on the table. And through that, the world of computing can take a quantum leap forward.

From Tom's Hardware: AMD Fusion: How It Started, Where It's Going, And What It Means
A simple explanation of "HSA"

  • HSA will eventually enable applications of all kinds to provide superior performance and power efficiency while being easy and inexpensive to develop.



What is "HSA"?

  • HSA is a short term for "Heterogenuous Systems Architecture". It is not something that is easy to describe because it is sort of both a software and a hardware thing. I'll do my best in the next few points.
  • How AMD describes HSA: The Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) provides a unified view of fundamental computing elements. HSA allows a programmer to write applications that seamlessly integrate CPUs (called latency compute units) with GPUs (called throughput compute units), while benefiting from the best attributes of each.
  • How I describe HSA: HSA is an integration that creates a compromise between traditional CPU-based coding and GPGPU coding. Traditional CPU coding (i.e. x86, C++, etc) is easier, less costly, and less time consuming while GPGPU coding is far more efficient but it is not common because it is limited, more difficult, costly and time consuming. Full HSA (which incorporates hUMA, which means heterogenuous unified memory architecture) is a combination of both. Its application is a variant of GPGPU (general purpose GPU) processing in which some functions of applications are coded to take advantage of the better performance & power efficiency that the GPU can provide in some scenarios, but it retains the ease and flexibility of coding for the traditional CPU.
  • HSA is an open standard that can be applied to any hardware designed and enabled for it. This means that everything from computer servers to desktop or laptop systems to even smartphones and tablets can advantage with HSA. ARM processors could possibly be designed for HSA and HSA implemented in ARM coding (i.e. Android apps).
  • HSA is a totally different and new direction because AMD may be the first processor company to have made such significant investment primarily to improve ease of programming.



What is the goal of HSA?

  • AMD description: The essence of the HSA strategy is to create a single unified programming platform providing a strong foundation for the development of languages, frameworks, and applications that exploit parallelism.
  • Full HSA will enable the creation of programs that cost less and take less time to develop, and provide more performance while using less power on HSA-enabled hardware.
  • With HSA, hardware integration benefits software result. HSA relies on a series of hardware specifics in the design (integrating CPU and GPU in one package or APU, hUMA/fully shared memory) and enables new component integration opportunities (i.e. the on-board ARM Cortex A5 core for security) in order to enable a level of software optimization that is powerful, efficient, easy to code, and secure.
  • Fundamentally and unofficially, The goal of HSA is to revolutionize modern computing.

Components of full HSA

  1. Integrating the CPU and GPU into one package - now known as the APU (accelerated processing unit)
  2. New coding libraries and tools for developers - now released as: CodeXL unified developer tool suite; AMD Bolt and the AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing (APP) SDK
  3. Using a new shared memory interface (hUMA - heterogenuous unified memory architecture) to maximize these development libraries and tools - to be introduced with Kaveri APU in late 2013



Why is HSA so "revolutionary"

  • HSA is very innovative because aside from the benefits it will provide, it has been designed to succeed from the start. As mentioned, one of the key points that can be made from HSA is that optimization for HSA is going to be easy to code - this is because of the hardware optimizations AMD can make in their APUs. Traditional programming for OpenCL and CUDA to enable apps to take advantage of the GPU has provided the same kind of benefits HSA will provide for quite awhile, but coding to take advantage of OpenCL and CUDA is difficult, time-consuming, and costly.
  • Coding for HSA optimization will be almost as easy and as quick as coding traditionally while giving the same performance and efficiency provided by the more complex GPGPU coding methods available today. This means that HSA can be easily adopted by developers.

What HSA means

for AMD

  • AMD saves billions of dollars in hardware research & devleopment costs because HSA makes those investments obsolete
  • Because HSA is an AMD-exclusive advantage, AMD will reap the benefits in its business and move towards becoming a larger, stronger company
  • AMD will not need to offer CPU-only parts, which may mean the end of Socket AM3+
  • AMD will not have a performance or price tier that traditionally we would consider to be "high end" (i.e. all products will be APUs)

for the competition

  • So far, HSA will initially only be possible with AMD and their APUs. This is why the development of HSA has taken so long and why (as of Sep 2012) there are no solutions on the market offering HSA compatibility.
  • AMD has exclusivity because HSA requires a specific level of integration that AMD has been preparing by designing its APUs a certain way. Intel's "APUs" do not follow the same design principles. For example: the average user might notice that the Llano and Trinity APUs are very bandwidth intensive and require fast RAM to get better performance. This is actually because on AMD APUs, CPU & GPU communication is done via main memory. Llano and Trinity APUs accomplish a partial integration of this and the Kaveri APU which introduces HSA will feature true address-space sharing between CPU & GPU to enable HSA.
  • Samsung, who has joined AMD's HSA foundation (a foundation to promote HSA), may be interested in designing its next Exynos ARM chips to integrate with an HSA standard on ARM. [SEE LINK] This will give Samsung a huge advantage over other ARM chip manufacturers.
  • Competing companies such as Intel and Nvidia will fall behind until they can introduce a competing solution. Intel might have this in 2015 with the Skylake CPU integrating components of the previous "Larabee" project but this is a totally different concept.
  • The advent of Socket FM2/Kaveri APU with HSA will basically render every other current-socket Intel and AMD CPU-only part obsolete. All those new hardware innovations Intel is spending billions on... the 14nm, the 2x graphics performance with Haswell, the 22nm Atom, none of them are going to amount to anything close to what HSA will amount to (not that companies will stop innovating in that sector).

for us



  • Attaining high performance will be far less expensive.
  • The prices of technology will go down significantly.
  • A total revolution in the way we build and choose parts for our PCs.
  • "IPC" will cease to exist in our discussions and comparisons.
  • We are probably going to make less recommendations for Intel PCs.
  • See below: HSA benchmark results

for humanity

  • Technology access is cheaper for everyone (since performance does not require expensive parts)
  • More productivity (people can get more performance and get things done faster for far less money)
  • Environmental benefits (PCs worldwide will be providing the same performance while using less power)
  • More programs and more things we can use our computers for
  • Lowered cost of software in addition to hardware
  • More mobility - Mobile devices get longer battery life

When will we start seeing the benefits of full HSA?



  • We can! AMD has enabled HSA benefits in its 2014 "Kaveri APU" product, which takes advantage of full HSA where software supports it.
  • Many components of AMD's HSA (basic APUs and HSA software development tools) were previously released.
  • Obviously AMD is going to need a repository of HSA-enabled apps. This can be expected to come quickly because HSA optimization is easy to code, and because AMD has already attained a lot of partners in the software industry by promoting and creating partnerships through its HSA foundation. The software development libraries are already out and ready to use.

HSA Benchmark Results

[WCCF] AMD Kaveri Vs i5-4670k Benchmarks Showdown Continued - HSA Features Test

Confirmed fully HSA enabled apps

LibreOffice from version 4.1 and up

AIDA64 benchmarks from November update onwards

Corel AfterShot Pro from version 2 and up

PCMark from version 8 and up

SiSoft Sandra from version 2014 and up
AMD Catalyst Drivers from version 14.1 and up (Mantle drivers)

For reference and further reading


In the meantime, if you have any more questions, post here in the thread. I am here to find answers for you about HSA.

Quote:
As a result, HSA is a purpose designed architecture to enable the software ecosystem to combine and exploit the complementary capabilities of CPUs (sequential programming) and GPUs (parallel processing) to deliver new capabilities to users that go beyond the traditional usage scenarios. It may be the first time a processor company has made such significant investment primarily to improve ease of programming!
- Manju Hedge, AMD - see AnandTech article
Quote:
At the end of the day, we're not maniacally focused on beating a single company. We're maniacally focused on up-leveling the experience of all consumers. By doing that, many of our competition will fall out. They'll not have the IP, or they'll have only some of the IP. Or maybe they'll be forced to merge, which is a very difficult thing.
- Joe Macri, AMD - see Businessweek article
 
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6
#3 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by 1d10t View Post

hi xd_1771,maybe you still remember me
tongue.gif

Quick and stupid question, is HSA some sort of code, compiler or intrepreter?
I believe it's a term used to describe the use of the gpu, and cpu as one to process data. One of the most common current uses are some opencl programs. Obviously it's a bit more complicated then this, but this is the short answer.
 
#4 ·
Sort of.

In essence HSA is a coding architecutre, as it takes the same GPGPU concept used by OpenCL. However, it also leverages hardware integration (via APUs with CPUs & GPUs on one die designed to interact in a specific way) to enable easy coding. This allows for far better CPU & GPU collaboration. HSA opens up new advantages too (i.e. in physics, the different advantages of the CPU and the GPU can be combined for one seriously well performing output). HSA will ensure that the GPU is assisted by the CPU in as much the same way as CPU can be assisted by GPU.
 
#6 ·
Quote:
"At the end of the day, we're not maniacally focused on beating a single company," says AMD's Joe Macri. "We're maniacally focused on up-leveling the experience of all consumers. By doing that, many of our competition will fall out. They'll not have the IP, or they'll have only some of the IP. Or maybe they'll be forced to merge, which is a very difficult thing. Intel is a wildcard. No doubt about it, they're a very capable company and a great bunch of folks. But when you're the incumbent, it's much more difficult to embrace change. You only want to embrace unavoidable change because everything else costs money. So we gotta see how they pull their triggers. But I'd hate to be in their position. You don't know how many people I interview from Intel specifically because their research doesn't get utilized, because a VP says, 'Hey, that's just going to cost us money. Maybe we'll utilize your research somewhere over the next ten years.' That kills an engineer."
This would be amazing if it was true. Truth is if they were they would make HSA open to all hardware makers including Intel. Open source would be amazing but AMD would not do that, cause no matter how much they try to play the good guy, it simply is not the case. They wanna be on top just as much as Intel wants to stay there.

On topic, cant wait to see if this comes to be as good as they are making it out to be. As a APU enthusist myself would be nice to see them take the hill. I have two questions though.

First cuda and a few other clones have been out for years but not much mainstream companies utalize this process, so whats to prevent mainstream games and benchmark makers from ignoring HSA and just sticking with business as usual?

Also, I find it hard to believe that a heavy hitter like Intel who has way more money than AMD just not do anything to try and combat this oncoming revolution, I mean its not like AMD has kept quite about the coming change. They are well aware of it, and have plenty of time to make a choice.
 
#7 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cannon19932006 View Post

I believe it's a term used to describe the use of the gpu, and cpu as one to process data. One of the most common current uses are some opencl programs. Obviously it's a bit more complicated then this, but this is the short answer.
Quote:
Originally Posted by xd_1771 View Post

Sort of.
In essence HSA is a coding architecutre, as it takes the same GPGPU concept used by OpenCL. However, it also leverages hardware integration (via APUs with CPUs & GPUs on one die designed to interact in a specific way) to enable easy coding. This allows for far better CPU & GPU collaboration. HSA opens up new advantages too (i.e. in physics, the different advantages of the CPU and the GPU can be combined for one seriously well performing output). HSA will ensure that the GPU is assisted by the CPU in as much the same way as CPU can be assisted by GPU.
so AMD is trying to take traditional serial task of CPU and parallel task of GPU into one unified architecture.joining CPU and GPU into one die reducing a cost, and on the other side raising CPU main lacks, Floating Point.dependant data would perform by CPU and independent data would count by GPU.Oh no...my nose bleeding and my head spinning
frown.gif

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dimaggio1103 View Post

First cuda and a few other clones have been out for years but not much mainstream companies utalize this process, so whats to prevent mainstream games and benchmark makers from ignoring HSA and just sticking with business as usual?
CUDA is proprietary nVidia,not like OpenCL as open standard,which is HSA's based.
 
#8 ·
Great writeup. Thanks.

Can't wait for Kaveri.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dimaggio1103 View Post

Quote:
"At the end of the day, we're not maniacally focused on beating a single company," says AMD's Joe Macri. "We're maniacally focused on up-leveling the experience of all consumers. By doing that, many of our competition will fall out. They'll not have the IP, or they'll have only some of the IP. Or maybe they'll be forced to merge, which is a very difficult thing. Intel is a wildcard. No doubt about it, they're a very capable company and a great bunch of folks. But when you're the incumbent, it's much more difficult to embrace change. You only want to embrace unavoidable change because everything else costs money. So we gotta see how they pull their triggers. But I'd hate to be in their position. You don't know how many people I interview from Intel specifically because their research doesn't get utilized, because a VP says, 'Hey, that's just going to cost us money. Maybe we'll utilize your research somewhere over the next ten years.' That kills an engineer."
This would be amazing if it was true. Truth is if they were they would make HSA open to all hardware makers including Intel. Open source would be amazing but AMD would not do that, cause no matter how much they try to play the good guy, it simply is not the case. They wanna be on top just as much as Intel wants to stay there.

On topic, cant wait to see if this comes to be as good as they are making it out to be. As a APU enthusist myself would be nice to see them take the hill. I have two questions though.

First cuda and a few other clones have been out for years but not much mainstream companies utalize this process, so whats to prevent mainstream games and benchmark makers from ignoring HSA and just sticking with business as usual?

Also, I find it hard to believe that a heavy hitter like Intel who has way more money than AMD just not do anything to try and combat this oncoming revolution, I mean its not like AMD has kept quite about the coming change. They are well aware of it, and have plenty of time to make a choice.
pretty much everything relating to HSA is open source. it requires a level of hardware integration to work, however, which is why it won't work on anything Intel has out now.

Intel can embrace HSA if they want to, probably without any licensing fees whatsoever.
 
#10 ·
Quote:
Truth is if they were they would make HSA open to all hardware makers including Intel.
Uhh.... they can't. They can only open up HSA to Intel if Intel can design a spec that could be compatible with HSA. For that to happen, Intel would have to redesign its whole CPU-GPU integration to adopt a system similar to AMD's (i.e. shared memory). The lack of Intel participation isn't due to anything on AMD's part, that would be Intel's decision. They seem to be very confident in their x86 research and more focused on firing nukes ARM than AMD.
 
#11 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Usario View Post

Great writeup. Thanks.
Can't wait for Kaveri.
pretty much everything relating to HSA is open source. it requires a level of hardware integration to work, however, which is why it won't work on anything Intel has out now.
Intel can embrace HSA if they want to, probably without any licensing fees whatsoever.
Ah I see now. thanks for the clarifacation guys. So considering if they cant beat it elsewhere all they have to do is shift gears and use HSA, considering their massive budget I just dont see Intel being put out of business either way as some have stated HSA will do.
 
#13 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by PunkX 1 View Post
You finally made the thread
wubsmiley.gif

HSA FTW
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I was contemplating and for awhile I was feeling lazy and wasn't sure if I was actually going to do it but here I am
tongue.gif
 
#14 ·
xd_1771 the following will definitely interest you then
smile.gif
,

Quote:
AMD CodeXL is a comprehensive tool suite that enables developers to harness the benefits of AMD CPUs, GPUs and APUs. It includes powerful GPU debugging, comprehensive GPU and CPU profiling, and static OpenCL™ kernel analysis capabilities, enhancing accessibility for software developers to enter the era of heterogeneous computing. AMD CodeXL is available both as a Visual Studio® extension and a standalone user interface application for Windows® and Linux®.

AMD CodeXL increases developer productivity by helping them identify programming errors and performance issues in their application quickly and easily. Now developers can debug, profile and analyze their applications with a full system-wide view on AMD APU, GPU and CPUs.
source
 
#15 ·
^ There was a recent news release about CodeXL so yes I am aware of that
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the first HSA software tool!
 
#16 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by xd_1771 View Post

^ There was a recent news release about CodeXL so yes I am aware of that
thumb.gif
the first HSA software tool!
I guess that somewhat surprises me as good development software will be what makes (or brakes) HSA. Since we're seeing closer relationships between gpu & cpu its clear that the gpu is becoming a vital co-processor. The company that manages both effective hardware design and software dev tools is gong to be the powerhouse in the future
 
#17 ·
I know this is less about the software side of HSA, but the whitepaper on AMD's GCN architecture goes into some detail about how it is shared memory compatable while vliw 4/5 is not.

I'll add the linky when I find it. I'm looking forward to seeing HSA in action. I didn't read any of the links yet (i know I've read some already) but you have the one where AMD shows the facial recognition software using it?

As promised, in pdf form http://www.amd.com/us/Documents/GCN_Architecture_whitepaper.pdf
Yeroon
 
#21 ·
Extremetech has an article on this subject, too. I like it, fine reading. Radeon gpu's are already calculating early stages of datasets faster than cpu's, but the gains are inhibited by the necessity of sending stored data back to the cpu via system memory. Especially the part about memory address coherency that new radeon's will benefit by the arrival of Kaveri architecture: it's gonna be awesome.
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/130939-the-future-of-amds-fusion-apus-kaveri-will-fully-share-memory-between-cpu-and-gpu/
 
#22 ·
Thread updated, stickied
 
#23 ·
Two new articles, written by Kurt Shuler from Arteris*, about the HSA, its Asymmetric Multi-processing, HSA programmability and HSA hardware interconnect:

1. SMP, Asymmetric Multi- processing And The HSA Foundation:
http://chipdesignmag.com/sld/shuler/2012/09/27/smp-asymmetric-multiprocessing-and-the-hsa-foundation/

2. Putting The "Heterogeneous" In The HSA Foundation:
http://chipdesignmag.com/sld/shuler/2012/10/25/putting-the-%e2%80%9cheterogeneous%e2%80%9d-in-the-hsa-foundation/

From the last article:
Quote:
In last month's article I explained why symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) architectures have been popular in PC and server markets, and why heterogeneous or asymmetric multiprocessing (AMP) has been the norm in mobility and consumer electronics markets. I also explained the trends that are leading PC and server markets to adopt heterogeneous architectures and introduced the HSA Foundation's goal of making heterogeneous core chips easy to program.
In this month's article I will introduce the HSA Solution Stack and give a longer-term vision of how HSA can scale beyond CPU-GPU computing.
* Arteris: http://www.techpowerup.com/171469/HSA-Foundation-Announces-Six-New-Members.html
 
#24 ·
DMP Joins Heterogeneous System Architecture (HSA) Foundation
Quote:
By supporting the HSA Foundation initiative, DMP wants to accelerate and simplify application development for mobile GPGPU platforms. The benefits of heterogeneous architectures and computing will allow smooth user experience for computer vision, image processing and graphics intensive applications on small consumer devices.
http://www.techpowerup.com/174725/DMP-Joins-Heterogeneous-System-Architecture-(HSA)-Foundation.html
 
#25 ·
PGI and AMD Collaborate on APU Compilers to the Benefit of HPC Programmers
Quote:
PGI Accelerator™ Fortran, C and C++ compilers will soon target the AMD line of accelerated processing units (APUs) as well as the AMD line of discrete GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) accelerators. PGI will work closely with AMD to extend its PGI Accelerator directive-based compilers to generate code directly for AMD GPU accelerators, and to generate heterogeneous x64+GPU executable files that automatically use both the CPU and GPU compute capabilities of AMD APUs.
http://www.pgroup.com/about/news.htm#54
 
#26 ·
Now, I'm positively shocked:

LG Electronics Joins the HSA Foundation !!!
bigeyedsmiley.png

Quote:
With LG Electronics on board, new possibilities emerge as the fusion of HSA and LG's current IP bring a whole new level of interactivity for consumers- from home appliances to entertainment systems, the HSA foundation acquires greater depth in the smartphone, tablets, TV, digital cameras, game consoles and even the E-reader space.
http://www.techpowerup.com/174794/LG-Electronics-Joins-the-HSA-Foundation.html
 
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