[owlbite]

I think calling VLIW "an adandoned design" is somewhat of an exaggeration, such architectures are pretty common for embedded audio processing.

[matt_d]

Worth adding on that note:

From JAX to VLIW: Tracing a Computation Through the TPU Compiler Stack, https://patricktoulme.substack.com/p/from-jax-to-vliw-tracin...

Google’s Training Chips Revealed: TPUv2 and TPUv3, HotChips 2020, https://hc32.hotchips.org/assets/program/conference/day2/Hot...

Ten Lessons From Three Generations Shaped Google’s TPUv4i, ISCA 2021, https://gwern.net/doc/ai/scaling/hardware/2021-jouppi.pdf

[mike_hearn]

Thanks, that JAX writeup was interesting.

[mike_hearn]

Sure. I did mention DSPs. But how many people write code for DSPs?

[HarHarVeryFunny]

x86-64 SSE and AVX are also SIMD

[vel0city]

SIMD and VLIW are somewhat similar but very different in the end.

[HarHarVeryFunny]

True.

The ISA in this Anthropic machine is actually both, VLIW and SIMD, and both are relevant to the problem.