Tuesday, June 18th 2024
Flow Computing Claims its PPU can Boost CPU Performance by 100x
A Finnish company called Flow Computing is making some very bold claims when it comes to its new IP. The company has developed what it calls a Parallel Processing Unit or a PPU, which the company claims can boost the performance of any CPU by a hundred times its current performance. Furthermore, the company claims that its PPU can double the performance of any current code execution, with no need for any kind of optimisation for its PPU. The PPU can be integrated into new processors, but it can also be designed as a discrete chip that can be added to any current hardware and Flow Computing claims the performance benefits will be the same in both instances.
Flow Computing is a spinoff from the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and the company emerged from stealth mode last week with around €4 million in funding. Flow Computing doesn't intend to make its PPU by itself, but instead, the company wants to licence its tech to third parties, to give everyone an equal opportunity to take advantage of what's on offer. At this point in time, Flow Computing hasn't made any custom silicon, instead the company has validated its PPU using an FPGA tested against various Intel CPUs. As such, there are numbers to back up its claims and we've provided links below to a whitepaper and an FAQ for those that are interested in doing a deep dive into its claims. Flow Computing appears to have a few different implementations of its PPU, ranging from 16 to 256 cores, with the latter being for high-end computers, but the basic is said to be suitable for something as basic as a smartwatch. Time will tell if Flow Computing will be able to deliver on its claims and it'll be an interesting company to follow.
Sources:
Flow Computing, FAQ, Whitepaper
Flow Computing is a spinoff from the VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and the company emerged from stealth mode last week with around €4 million in funding. Flow Computing doesn't intend to make its PPU by itself, but instead, the company wants to licence its tech to third parties, to give everyone an equal opportunity to take advantage of what's on offer. At this point in time, Flow Computing hasn't made any custom silicon, instead the company has validated its PPU using an FPGA tested against various Intel CPUs. As such, there are numbers to back up its claims and we've provided links below to a whitepaper and an FAQ for those that are interested in doing a deep dive into its claims. Flow Computing appears to have a few different implementations of its PPU, ranging from 16 to 256 cores, with the latter being for high-end computers, but the basic is said to be suitable for something as basic as a smartwatch. Time will tell if Flow Computing will be able to deliver on its claims and it'll be an interesting company to follow.
18 Comments on Flow Computing Claims its PPU can Boost CPU Performance by 100x
I feel like we have seen this stuff before. How long before Nvidia buys them?
>>using an FPGA tested against various Intel CPUs...
I stopped reading after that statement and here is my comment:
This is a Classical Example of Technological Scam, similar to Tachyum claims about their Universal Processing Unit. Where is the Tachyum now?
Please read Fine Print text on the Slide #3...
Apple computer owners What do you think?I stopped following Any news about Tachyum since August 2023...NVIDIA designed an "acceleration technology" many-many years ago and called it GPU. Everybody knows that GPUs really accelerate processing.
Almost 4 years ago I've attached 4 External GPUs to a Dell Precision M4700 Mobile Workstation and accelerated a vector addition processing by 125 times.
Please take a look at the Video Technical Report:.
Dell Precision M4700 Mobile Workstation accelerated 125x to 11.155 TFLOPs ( VTR-088 )
Published on 21.10.2020
If it would be so easy to increase performance by 100 times without external accelerators, like GPUs or FPGAs, everybody would do it. Period.
Flow Computing company was founded by 3 academia guys.
I've read two documents from www.theverge.com/2024/6/11/24176304/flow-computing-startup-parallel-processing-accelerator
Document 1: s3.documentcloud.org/documents/24741450/flow-computing-faq-under-embargo-until-11-jun-at-9am-edt.pdf
Document 2: s3.documentcloud.org/documents/24741449/flow-computing-white-paper-design-goals-and-hw-sw-advantages-2024-5.pdf
They've claimed that No publications or Github codes are available however there is a very good publication of a Thick Control Flow ( TCF ) architecture at:
flow-computing.com/news/performance-and-programmability-comparison-of-the-thick-control-flow-architecture-and-current-multicore-processors/
Performance and Programmability Comparison of the Thick Control Flow Architecture and Current Multicore Processors
doi.org/10.1007/s11227-021-03985-0
My personal opinion, as a Software Engineer, is Not changed: It looks like a High-Tech-Scam similar to Universal Processing Unit of Tachyum.
They even used the same names with the only difference being the PPU as the CPU Core and the SPU as the Vector/Parallel unit
This flow computing PPU is either
1) A scam
2) Real world Dunning-Kruger effect
3) Revolutionary
I am going with 50/49.9/.1 as the chances for each.
These academia guys made All conclusions after running a set of benchmarks in a simulator with assumptions like "memory latency is hidden", or Emulated Shared Memory ( ESM ), and compared results against two real Intel CPUs.