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> If their claims are true, Tesla has 1 upped everyone in the AI hardware and software field. I’m skeptical, but this is also a hardware geek’s wet dream. How

by ra7 5y ago

> If their claims are true, Tesla has 1 upped everyone in the AI hardware and software field. I’m skeptical, but this is also a hardware geek’s wet dream. How is the author declaring Tesla has one upped everyone in AI hardware and software while the article has exactly zero references to TPUs?

new_realist 5y ago
Also, these chips are as yet only in Tesla’s labs, not in production. What’s cooking in secret in NVIDIA’s labs right now?NVIDIA doesn’t have to hype their stuff, so they don’t tip their hand to competitors until it’s ready for sale. Creating a lab beast is one thing, making it useful and economical in production is another.
shaklee3 5y ago
It's also a fictional product at this point. Even if the hardware existed, if you can't program it, it won't succeed.
- TaylorAlexander 5y ago
  In their presentation yesterday they made it clear that they have a full software stack for programming it. I don't know what is marketing hype and what is real, but they suggested it is very easy for them to program for it.
  - creato 5y ago
    Every hardware vendor ever says that. It's probably true for the people that built the software stack. Whether it is true for third parties is TBD.
    - TaylorAlexander 5y ago
      There’s no third party here. As far as I can tell Tesla designed the chips and wrote the software stack to work together. They don’t want to rely on third parties for their critical infrastructure and AI chip design is vital to their success. At least this is what I can grok as an outsider.
      - shaklee3 5y ago
        Right, I understand the claims, but as you can see with AMD there's a ton of work to actually be competitive, and AMD has a large team working on it. I'm just skeptical at the claim the the software is of any use to anyone but a small group.
        TaylorAlexander 5y ago
        I think the difference is that AMD needs to cater to a wide variety of customers, software stacks, and hardware platforms. Tesla has basically one platform and one customer (themselves). Their software only needs to be useful to a small group - the autonomy team. I did not get the impression that Tesla plans to sell supercomputers, but that they are building these supercomputers for themselves to train and deploy AI networks. You said "Even if the hardware existed, if you can't program it, it won't succeed." But it seems like the key customer - Tesla's internal Autopilot team - can already program it. So I just don't see any problem. They may choose to sell these systems (note that they have been shipping their Gen1 custom chip for years now and it is not for sale to the public), but the real plan for revenue is to succeed at AI and profit there. For that they need incredible computing power internally and in a portable platform for edge deployment, but they do not need to sell their chips as a general purpose compute platform.
        shaklee3 5y ago
        My problem with articles like these is the sensational headlines that Tesla made an AMD/Nvidia killer. AMD and Nvidia could both make this chip if they wanted to, but dedicating all the die to matrix multiply cores is a waste for most end users. The media makes it seem like Tesla did something revolutionary here, but all they did was make a very, very targeted asic.
        TaylorAlexander 5y ago
        That makes sense. Certainly lots of journalism is bad. I haven’t read the article actually. I’ve just watched the two hour presentation by Tesla as well as their past presentations. I am a robotics engineer and I’ve been trying to understand how best to make an “animal like” brain system for an autonomous robot in the real world. I have been pleased with how much Tesla shared about their system and I think their extremely powerful hardware and their neural network approach is ideal for solving this problem. So I’m very happy with what they’ve come up with and I’m happy that it will push competitors to do the same as I think very large neural networks might be needed to solve general purpose robotics. So all in all I think the chip is very good and I think they are on a path to success. Whatever the article says to hype it up doesn’t change the value of what Tesla has done in my eyes.
bagels 5y ago
A few of big tech companies are doing things like this without publicizing it.
mda 5y ago
Probably Google already have at 100x compute power of whatever Tesla has. (Sundar mentioned in Google I/O that a single TPU v4 pod has >1 exaflopfs)
dekhn 5y ago
the how is: ML hype. Very few people can actually swim through the hype to the actual island, and in this case, the author isn't even capable of judging.

by ra7 5y ago

new_realist 5y ago

Also, these chips are as yet only in Tesla’s labs, not in production. What’s cooking in secret in NVIDIA’s labs right now?NVIDIA doesn’t have to hype their stuff, so they don’t tip their hand to competitors until it’s ready for sale. Creating a lab beast is one thing, making it useful and economical in production is another.

shaklee3 5y ago

It's also a fictional product at this point. Even if the hardware existed, if you can't program it, it won't succeed.

TaylorAlexander 5y ago
In their presentation yesterday they made it clear that they have a full software stack for programming it. I don't know what is marketing hype and what is real, but they suggested it is very easy for them to program for it.
- creato 5y ago
  Every hardware vendor ever says that. It's probably true for the people that built the software stack. Whether it is true for third parties is TBD.
  - TaylorAlexander 5y ago
    There’s no third party here. As far as I can tell Tesla designed the chips and wrote the software stack to work together. They don’t want to rely on third parties for their critical infrastructure and AI chip design is vital to their success. At least this is what I can grok as an outsider.
    - shaklee3 5y ago
      Right, I understand the claims, but as you can see with AMD there's a ton of work to actually be competitive, and AMD has a large team working on it. I'm just skeptical at the claim the the software is of any use to anyone but a small group.
      - TaylorAlexander 5y ago
        I think the difference is that AMD needs to cater to a wide variety of customers, software stacks, and hardware platforms. Tesla has basically one platform and one customer (themselves). Their software only needs to be useful to a small group - the autonomy team. I did not get the impression that Tesla plans to sell supercomputers, but that they are building these supercomputers for themselves to train and deploy AI networks. You said "Even if the hardware existed, if you can't program it, it won't succeed." But it seems like the key customer - Tesla's internal Autopilot team - can already program it. So I just don't see any problem. They may choose to sell these systems (note that they have been shipping their Gen1 custom chip for years now and it is not for sale to the public), but the real plan for revenue is to succeed at AI and profit there. For that they need incredible computing power internally and in a portable platform for edge deployment, but they do not need to sell their chips as a general purpose compute platform.
        shaklee3 5y ago
        My problem with articles like these is the sensational headlines that Tesla made an AMD/Nvidia killer. AMD and Nvidia could both make this chip if they wanted to, but dedicating all the die to matrix multiply cores is a waste for most end users. The media makes it seem like Tesla did something revolutionary here, but all they did was make a very, very targeted asic.
        TaylorAlexander 5y ago
        That makes sense. Certainly lots of journalism is bad. I haven’t read the article actually. I’ve just watched the two hour presentation by Tesla as well as their past presentations. I am a robotics engineer and I’ve been trying to understand how best to make an “animal like” brain system for an autonomous robot in the real world. I have been pleased with how much Tesla shared about their system and I think their extremely powerful hardware and their neural network approach is ideal for solving this problem. So I’m very happy with what they’ve come up with and I’m happy that it will push competitors to do the same as I think very large neural networks might be needed to solve general purpose robotics. So all in all I think the chip is very good and I think they are on a path to success. Whatever the article says to hype it up doesn’t change the value of what Tesla has done in my eyes.

bagels 5y ago

A few of big tech companies are doing things like this without publicizing it.

mda 5y ago

Probably Google already have at 100x compute power of whatever Tesla has. (Sundar mentioned in Google I/O that a single TPU v4 pod has >1 exaflopfs)

dekhn 5y ago

the how is: ML hype. Very few people can actually swim through the hype to the actual island, and in this case, the author isn't even capable of judging.