the handshake process to unlock the A100 cores is pretty interesting it reminds me of driving CPU cores like a GPU command queue.

See:

https://github.com/brucehoult/k3_ai

Or my longer top level comment.

Unlike a GPU or NPU, you can just run all your normal RISC-V Linux programs on the AI cores. Bash, gcc, emacs, nodejs ... whatever you want. It's an extra 40% of scalar processing power, for free.

    Build Linux kernel 7503345ac5f5
    
    14m25.56s SpacemiT K3 8 X100 cores plus 8x A100 cores distcc
    18m3.871s SpacemiT K3 8 X100 cores @2.4 GHz
    19m12.787s i9-13900HX, 24C/32T @5.4 GHz, riscv64/ubuntu docker
    39m23.187s SpacemiT K3 8 A100 cores @2.0 GHz
    42m12.414s Milk-V Megrez 4 P550 cores @1.8 GHz
    67m35.189s VisionFive 2, 4 U74 cores @1.5 GHz
    70m57.001s LicheePi 3A, 8 X60 cores @1.6 GHz
    88m04.185s LicheePi 4A, 4 C910 cores @1.85 GHz