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How is Google's TPU chip a commodity? If anyone is commoditizing a ML chip, it's ironically-enough Nvidia <nvdla.org>. (And the RISC-V ecosystem will most like
by zozbot123 8y ago
How is Google's TPU chip a commodity? If anyone is commoditizing a ML chip, it's ironically-enough Nvidia <nvdla.org>. (And the RISC-V ecosystem will most likely get there eventually, but that's kindof a given anyway. Systolic arrays are very old tech, of Atari Transputer fame.)
- vonnik 8y agoGoogle's TPU decreases demand for chips from Nvidia, by introducing a competing chip within Google that runs ML workloads really quickly, so people pay less for algorithm training. Since TPUs are not commercially available outside of GCP, GPUs are only commoditized for Google and whoever uses TPUs on its cloud.
- wbl 8y agoThat's not commoditization. It's the exact opposite where Google is trying to have a differentiated TPU product they use.
- vonnik 8y agoIt doesn't matter how TPUs are different from GPUs. It matters what the two chips have in common, which is the kind of workloads you can run on them. Any good that is a cheaper and plausible alternative to another good commoditizes the latter.