Chip startup Efficient Computer has emerged from stealth mode and unveiled a processor microarchitecture that promises to be 100 times more energy efficient than currently available general-purpose CPUs. The reconfigurable processor architecture is tailored for specific use cases, particularly in low-power embedded and edge computing, and requires a proprietary software stack (compiler) that supports general programming languages. Reuters reports that Efficient already has its first test chip, called Monza.
Traditional general-purpose processors are architected to handle virtually all workloads possible and to be backwards compatible with software released decades ago, which greatly increases their complexity and eventually power consumption. As Efficient Computer puts it, they are overdesigned for generality and spend loads of power on inessential internal data movement and instruction control overheads. Efficient's Fabric architecture is a reconfigurable dataflow processor architecture that can execute specially optimized code with parallelism on its 'computing fabric.' The architecture was developed in over seven years of research at Carnegie Mellon University.
Recompiling software is a must for this architecture, so software compatibility will be a limitation of Fabric-based processors on the mainstream market. Efficient's software stack supports major embedded languages, so developers of actual applications will be able to quickly recompile their code for the fabric architecture.
Efficient provides few details regarding how its processor architecture works, but based on how the company describes it, it looks like the CPU resources can be adjusted by software for a particular workload, which can greatly enhance efficiency. Meanwhile, Efficient claims that Fabric can handle general-purpose data processing computations, data analytics, and be used for AI and ML, which suggests that we are dealing with an inherently parallel architecture. Efficient says its Fabric architecture is 100 times more efficient than microcontroller units (MCUs) and consumes 1,000 times less power than GPUs. What the company has not revealed are actual performance numbers for chips based on the Fabric architecture.
Yet Efficient is wasting no time to remind us of several key advantages of processors with low power consumption. In general, Fabric enables more efficient on-device computing solutions (which eliminates or reduces costly communication to the cloud), lower operational costs, larger fleet sizes, and a reduced environmental impact. Ultimate energy efficiency could create new use cases and even new classes of devices, which will diminish its software compatibility issues as those devices will need new software anyway.
"Energy consumption impacts nearly everything in modern computing, from where devices are located to the capabilities they offer and the scale of their deployment," said Brandon Lucia, co-founder and CEO of Efficient Computer. "We are removing the energy barrier from computing at the edge, while giving developers the freedom and flexibility to quickly build devices and applications at scale. Efficient hardware and software will significantly reduce energy consumption for computing, creating entirely new categories of use cases."
Efficient Computer has received its first round of funding of $16 million led by Eclipse, a venture capital firm that has funded Cerebras, FlexLogix, and Tenstorrent.
"The technology community's long-held secret of highly inefficient general-purpose processors has slowed innovation and limited applications, particularly at the edge," said Greg Reichow, partner at Eclipse. "More than just closing this gap, the Efficient team is introducing an entirely new category of processor that is enabling organizations to reconsider what is possible. With its unmatched energy efficiency, the software-agnostic processor is capable of powering a variety of smart devices with additional capabilities designed to improve the user experience, data consumption, and overall serves as a catalyst for innovation moving forward."
