5 ms·

There is not a lot of high performance digital logic that does not originate in the US. ARM Ltd is possibly one exception. Though after many many years of atte

There is not a lot of high performance digital logic that does not originate in the US. ARM Ltd is possibly one exception. Though after many many years of attempting high performance designs and coming out with mediocre designs they promptly had their doors absolutely blown off by Apple i.e., the US PA Semi design team, in its first outing (or second, if you count PA6T, which I guess you should, but the PA6T itself was superior in performance to ARM cores when it was released too, they just didn't play quite so obviously in the same markets). Japan does some boutique supercomputer CPUs I suppose although I don't think they're actually competitive so much as a protected and subsidized venture. I don't know why. China, Russia, Japan, Europe have been attempting this for a long time with comparatively little success, then you get a startup in the US come out with something great. It's interesting, it almost seems there are dynasties of some secret sauce, the recipe of which was discovered in 1960s and they only pass it down by word of mouth. There are so many of these design teams in startups and established companies you hear about with roots in DEC or Intel or IBM. Maybe that's changing. Maybe it's less true with GPUs than CPUs. Not sure though, USA is certainly the center of the universe for all that stuff at the moment.

sanxiyn 4y ago
Well, Mali GPU was from Norway. I guess you would say Mali GPU is not high performance, but it is interesting that countries like Norway can come up with commercially competitive GPU design. I am sure China can as well.
- throwawaylinux 4y ago
  It's not that China has not been trying to develop these kinds of HPC technologies for several decades and will begin to now in response to these latest round of embargos. And they have produced things. They just aren't competitive.
  - sanxiyn 4y ago
    According to whom? I know people who sing praise of Huawei Ascend, as the best AI inference chip currently in the market. https://www.hiascend.com/en/ https://www.hiascend.com/en/
    - throwawaylinux 4y ago
      According to their failures in markets where they compete with other products. I don't know about this chip. Possibly this time it'll be different, unlike all the previous times it would be different but wasn't. I don't think that's been established yet though. And certainly it's not for CPU cores or even more general purpose GPUs.
      - sanxiyn 4y ago
        You don't know about Huawei Ascend, which launched in 2019 (see https://www.huawei.com/en/news/2019/8/huawei-ascend-910-most-powerful-ai-processor https://www.huawei.com/en/news/2019/8/huawei-ascend-910-most...), and now after 3 years everyone (at least here in East Asia) trying to actually deploy AI inference at least heard about, as one of the best solution in the market, and still are commenting on AI accelerators and "their failures in markets where they compete with other products", okay. Go on being clueless. It's already here. What the fuck are you talking about, "I don't think that's been established yet". That would have made sense in 2019, not in 2022.
        throwawaylinux 4y ago
        Swearing and getting angry at the situation isn't going to change things for you.
notact 4y ago
Could the secret sauce be the outrageous salaries paid by US/SV tech companies? That will suck a lot of the talent away from other nations.
- uxp100 4y ago
  The pay at SV semiconductor companies is great, but not as high as at the sort of modern web companies. Moving from Intel or Nvidia to Google is a big salary bump for a software person. Hardware side I think this is less true, but in general hardware folks and electrical engineers in general don’t get the absolutely outrageous SV salaries in SV.
mechagodzilla 4y ago
It's not that far from the truth, in that much of high-performance chip design knowledge is acquired through on-the-job training / working with more experienced people. Learning computer architecture in school just teaches the basics about how digital logic and CPUs work (frequently with 1980s designs), not how to actually build a screaming fast 4 GHz chip that you can tape out and get high production yield on. So Intel, Nvidia, etc. train lots of engineers that go on to start other companies (or move between companies).

sanxiyn 4y ago

Well, Mali GPU was from Norway. I guess you would say Mali GPU is not high performance, but it is interesting that countries like Norway can come up with commercially competitive GPU design. I am sure China can as well.

throwawaylinux 4y ago
It's not that China has not been trying to develop these kinds of HPC technologies for several decades and will begin to now in response to these latest round of embargos. And they have produced things. They just aren't competitive.
- sanxiyn 4y ago
  According to whom? I know people who sing praise of Huawei Ascend, as the best AI inference chip currently in the market. https://www.hiascend.com/en/ https://www.hiascend.com/en/
  - throwawaylinux 4y ago
    According to their failures in markets where they compete with other products. I don't know about this chip. Possibly this time it'll be different, unlike all the previous times it would be different but wasn't. I don't think that's been established yet though. And certainly it's not for CPU cores or even more general purpose GPUs.
    - sanxiyn 4y ago
      You don't know about Huawei Ascend, which launched in 2019 (see https://www.huawei.com/en/news/2019/8/huawei-ascend-910-most-powerful-ai-processor https://www.huawei.com/en/news/2019/8/huawei-ascend-910-most...), and now after 3 years everyone (at least here in East Asia) trying to actually deploy AI inference at least heard about, as one of the best solution in the market, and still are commenting on AI accelerators and "their failures in markets where they compete with other products", okay. Go on being clueless. It's already here. What the fuck are you talking about, "I don't think that's been established yet". That would have made sense in 2019, not in 2022.
      - throwawaylinux 4y ago
        Swearing and getting angry at the situation isn't going to change things for you.

notact 4y ago

Could the secret sauce be the outrageous salaries paid by US/SV tech companies? That will suck a lot of the talent away from other nations.

uxp100 4y ago
The pay at SV semiconductor companies is great, but not as high as at the sort of modern web companies. Moving from Intel or Nvidia to Google is a big salary bump for a software person. Hardware side I think this is less true, but in general hardware folks and electrical engineers in general don’t get the absolutely outrageous SV salaries in SV.

mechagodzilla 4y ago

It's not that far from the truth, in that much of high-performance chip design knowledge is acquired through on-the-job training / working with more experienced people. Learning computer architecture in school just teaches the basics about how digital logic and CPUs work (frequently with 1980s designs), not how to actually build a screaming fast 4 GHz chip that you can tape out and get high production yield on. So Intel, Nvidia, etc. train lots of engineers that go on to start other companies (or move between companies).