Tachyum® today announced that it has successfully demonstrated a seamless execution of a non-native (x86_64) application under Linux running on the Prodigy FPGA emulation system. This capability will ensure the availability of a wide range of software applications to customers from day one when the Prodigy Universal Processor becomes generally available next year.
x86 (also known as x64, x86_64, AMD64 or Intel 64) is a family of Instruction Set Architectures (ISA) that accounts for the widest installation base for datacenter workloads today.
Because x86’s complexity and power consumption create a barrier to very high performance in nanometer-class processors, Tachyum’s revolutionary architecture does not include any x86 specific hardware, as this would limit Prodigy’s performance. Instead, a standard dynamic binary translator efficiently provides the ability to run unmodified Linux x86 binaries right out of the box.
Tachyum customers who want to run applications beyond those provided by Tachyum in Prodigy Linux distribution image, will initially utilize a dynamic binary translator while they port their legacy x86 applications to Prodigy native ISA, usually within 12-18 months. Prodigy allows users to mix x86 applications with native Prodigy applications, as previously demonstrated, by seamlessly running Prodigy native Apache web servers combined with x86 Linux binary databases.
Until customers migrate to fully native software environments, Prodigy will deliver 2x performance instead of the anticipated 3x performance versus Intel high-end CPUs on SPECint2017 rate. However, for most customers, only 20% of runtime will be legacy x86 applications, with the remaining 80% of runtime dedicated to native applications, such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, databases, and more, which Tachyum has already ported to native Prodigy ISA, typically delivering 80% x 3x + 20% x 2x = 2.8x more performance from day one.
Prodigy’s x86 performance outdistances other implementations, including the recently introduced Intel® Advanced Performance Extensions (Intel® APX) in Intel’s attempt to match new and modern ISAs; ARM or RISC-V processors that are far too slow for server applications; or Apple’s Rosetta dynamic binary translations that have sufficient performance to run x86 applications on laptops where low power is more important than the high performance needed for servers.
“Demonstrating the ability to run x86-64 binary applications on the Prodigy processor emulation is a key milestone for Tachyum and further validates our architecture before tape out,” said Dr. Radoslav Danilak, founder and CEO of Tachyum. “Proving all these existing binary applications on our FPGA emulator is critical in order to get Prodigy ready for volume production next year, allowing us to begin fulfilling the billions of dollars of orders we already have in our sales pipeline.”
As a Universal Processor offering industry leading performance for all workloads, Prodigy-powered data center servers can seamlessly and dynamically switch between computational domains (such as AI/ML, HPC, and cloud) with a single homogeneous architecture. By eliminating the need for expensive dedicated AI hardware and dramatically increasing server utilization, Prodigy reduces CAPEX and OPEX significantly while delivering unprecedented data center performance, power, and economics. Prodigy integrates 192 high-performance custom-designed 64-bit compute cores, to deliver up to 4.5x the performance of the highest-performing x86 processors for cloud workloads, up to 3x that of the highest performing GPU for HPC, and 6x for AI applications.
A video demonstration of x86-64 code running on Prodigy is available for viewing at https://youtu.be/DQjprZUjOlI.
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About Tachyum
Tachyum is transforming the economics of AI, HPC, public and private cloud workloads with Prodigy, the world’s first Universal Processor. Prodigy unifies the functionality of a CPU, a GPGPU, and a TPU in a single processor that delivers industry-leading performance, cost, and power efficiency for both specialty and general-purpose computing. When hyperscale data centers are provisioned with Prodigy, all AI, HPC, and general-purpose applications can run on the same infrastructure, saving companies billions of dollars in hardware, footprint, and operational expenses. As global data center emissions contribute to a changing climate, and consume more than four percent of the world’s electricity—projected to be 10 percent by 2030—the ultra-low power Prodigy Universal Processor is a potential breakthrough for satisfying the world’s appetite for computing at a lower environmental cost. Prodigy, now in its final stages of testing and integration before volume manufacturing, is being adopted in prototype form by a rapidly growing customer base, and robust purchase orders signal a likely IPO in late 2024. Tachyum has offices in the United States and Slovakia. For more information, visit https://www.tachyum.com/.
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