Heterogeneous Computing with Raja Koduri
Raja Koduri, former chief architect at Intel and AMD, joins Bryan Cantrill and Adam Leventhal to explain the differences between CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, and ASICs through historical and analogical lenses. Koduri traces the evolution from 3dfx and Direct3D to CUDA, arguing that NVIDIA’s success stems from a tight coupling of programming and execution models, which creates a sticky ecosystem. He uses transportation analogies to categorize these technologies—cars for CPUs, buses for GPUs, and construction vehicles for FPGAs—and discusses how advanced packaging and memory bandwidth are becoming the primary constraints in modern AI hardware.