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Not obsolete yet, the technology is not mature enough, and the previous arguments against WSI are still valid. People have been trying Wafer-Scale Integration

Not obsolete yet, the technology is not mature enough, and the previous arguments against WSI are still valid. People have been trying Wafer-Scale Integration [0] since the 1970s, there was quite some hype of building a "super chip" back at that time [1], but all efforts failed miserably. Cerebras' success is only the beginning, even if this approach is workable (which remains a question), there's still at least a decade to go from a HPC-specific chip to a general-purpose chip. Another possibility is that WSI will forever be a technology used in massively-parallel computers. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wafer-scale_integration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wafer-scale_integration [1] Giant microcircuits for superfast computers, Popular Science, 1984. https://books.google.com/books?id=eAAAAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA66 https://books.google.com/books?id=eAAAAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA66

gridlockd 6y ago
Another possibility is that the company will just fail, because it can not offer an advantage over commodity chips.
- segfaultbuserr 6y ago
  I already mentioned it, > even if this approach is workable (which remains a question) No need to repeat.
jecel 6y ago
I think it is important to separate the several technical failures in wafer scale from the commercial one: Sinclair's Anamartic worked exactly as planned but the prices for conventional hard disks began to drop and that caused investors to pull out. http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/3043/Anamartic-Wafer-Scale-160MB-Solid-State-Disk/ http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/3043/Anamartic-Wafer-... The problem is that the real project was a massively parallel computer just like the Cerebras (scaled to 1989 technological limits) and the disk replacement was just a way to develop the needed techniques and finance further developments. If the investors had had a little more patience then computing in the 1990s might have been a bit more interesting.

gridlockd 6y ago

Another possibility is that the company will just fail, because it can not offer an advantage over commodity chips.

segfaultbuserr 6y ago
I already mentioned it, > even if this approach is workable (which remains a question) No need to repeat.

jecel 6y ago

I think it is important to separate the several technical failures in wafer scale from the commercial one: Sinclair's Anamartic worked exactly as planned but the prices for conventional hard disks began to drop and that caused investors to pull out. http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/3043/Anamartic-Wafer-Scale-160MB-Solid-State-Disk/ http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/3043/Anamartic-Wafer-... The problem is that the real project was a massively parallel computer just like the Cerebras (scaled to 1989 technological limits) and the disk replacement was just a way to develop the needed techniques and finance further developments. If the investors had had a little more patience then computing in the 1990s might have been a bit more interesting.