McKinsey On The Future Of Compute: The Rise Of Domain-Specific Architectures
insideHPC, Wednesday, August 2,2023
There's more to the rise in HPC and AI of domain-specific architectures (DSAs), starting with GPUs, than just the superior throughput they can deliver. Yes, the deceleration of Moore's Law and Dennard scaling are the primary reasons for the CPU's decline in dominance. But other factors are playing a strong, enabling role for DSAs.
Consulting company McKinsey & Co. has issued a report, 'Domain-Specific Architectures and the Future of Compute,' that delves into the trends and new technologies that have 'increase(d) the incentive for architectural innovations..'
To begin, the McKinsey report states what has been widely observed. Regarding Moore's Law (transistor density doubles every two years), 'transistor scaling has meaningfully slowed in past years and is behind where Moore's Law would have predicted by a factor of about 10.' As for Dennard scaling (power consumption remains constant as transistor density increases), it 'is also failing, leading to an increasing need for complex cooling solutions in large data centers and other high-performance compute environments.'