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To:     Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>, Dave Airlie <airlied@gmail.com>,
        Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>,
        Maciej Kwapulinski <maciej.kwapulinski@linux.intel.com>,
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From:   Thomas Zimmermann <tzimmermann@suse.de>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 00/14] Driver of Intel(R) Gaussian & Neural Accelerator
Message-ID: <503d101d-7273-757a-2809-e272db93c45d@suse.de>
Date:   Mon, 17 May 2021 21:12:03 +0200
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From: Thomas Zimmermann <tzimmermann@suse.de>
To: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>, Dave Airlie <airlied@gmail.com>,
 Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>,
 Maciej Kwapulinski <maciej.kwapulinski@linux.intel.com>,
 Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>, Derek Kiernan <derek.kiernan@xilinx.com>,
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Message-ID: <503d101d-7273-757a-2809-e272db93c45d@suse.de>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 00/14] Driver of Intel(R) Gaussian & Neural Accelerator
References: <20210513110040.2268-1-maciej.kwapulinski@linux.intel.com>
 <YJ42MEgwDZrAEQLl@kroah.com>
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Hi

Am 17.05.21 um 09:40 schrieb Daniel Vetter:
> On Fri, May 14, 2021 at 11:00:38AM +0200, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
>> On Fri, May 14, 2021 at 10:34 AM Greg Kroah-Hartman
>> <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
>>> On Thu, May 13, 2021 at 01:00:26PM +0200, Maciej Kwapulinski wrote:
>>>> Dear kernel maintainers,
>>>>
>>>> This submission is a kernel driver to support Intel(R) Gaussian & Ne=
ural
>>>> Accelerator (Intel(R) GNA). Intel(R) GNA is a PCI-based neural co-pr=
ocessor
>>>> available on multiple Intel platforms. AI developers and users can o=
ffload
>>>> continuous inference workloads to an Intel(R) GNA device in order to=20
free
>>>> processor resources and save power. Noise reduction and speech recog=
nition
>>>> are the examples of the workloads Intel(R) GNA deals with while its =
usage
>>>> is not limited to the two.
>>>
>>> How does this compare with the "nnpi" driver being proposed here:
>>>          https://lore.kernel.org/r/20210513085725.45528-1-guy.zadicar=
io@intel.com
>>>
>>> Please work with those developers to share code and userspace api and=

>>> tools.  Having the community review two totally different apis and
>>> drivers for the same type of functionality from the same company is
>>> totally wasteful of our time and energy.
>>
>> Agreed, but I think we should go further than this and work towards a
>> subsystem across companies for machine learning and neural networks
>> accelerators for both inferencing and training.
>=20
> We have, it's called drivers/gpu. Feel free to rename to drivers/xpu or=

> think G as in General, not Graphisc.

I hope this was a joke.

Just some thoughts:

AFAICT AI first came as an application of GPUs, but has now=20
evolved/specialized into something of its own. I can imagine sharing=20
some code among the various subsystems, say GEM/TTM internals for memory =

management. Besides that there's probably little that can be shared in=20
the userspace interfaces. A GPU is device that puts an image onto the=20
screen and an AI accelerator isn't. Treating both as the same, even if=20
they share similar chip architectures, seems like a stretch. They might=20
evolve in different directions and fit less and less under the same=20
umbrella.

And as Dave mentioned, these devices are hard to obtain. We don't really =

know what we sign up for.

Just my 2 cents.

Best regards
Thomas


--=20
Thomas Zimmermann
Graphics Driver Developer
SUSE Software Solutions Germany GmbH
Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 N=C3=BCrnberg, Germany
(HRB 36809, AG N=C3=BCrnberg)
Gesch=C3=A4ftsf=C3=BChrer: Felix Imend=C3=B6rffer


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