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Don't worry too much because there is Moore's law to the rescue. NPUs benefit from new processes

by bibanez 4y ago

mcculley 4y ago
Moore's Law makes it a good long term strategy for Apple. The GP is complaining about his battery life today.
- lucideer 4y ago
  I hope it's not disrespectful to point this out, less than 24 hours after his passing, but I don't think Gordon would object to my pointing out that Moore's Law has a finite length. Some have argued it expired up to 13 years ago; Moore himself predicted another 2 years or so.
  - nwienert 4y ago
    I built an always on local OCR system that used ML on CPU/GPU a few years ago and I can say with confidence it doesn’t use much. We literally scanned your entire screen every two seconds and it used less than 1% in total, and this was before CoreML which is far more efficient. I think it’s FUD that it is that significant.
  - jjoonathan 4y ago
    RF transmission and reception have been bumping smack up against physics limits for a long time. Regardless of whether or not Moore's Law is Dead, it is an extremely good bet that there is more juice left in compute than in RF. For instance, even the "specialized" ML hardware of today has a comfortable factor of 10 in further possible optimization and probably considerably more. Also, due to the fact that these innovations tend to compound, there isn't just more juice, there is e to the power of more juice left. "Moore's Law is Dead" is a bit of a joke in the hardware space because a staggering number of smart people have made staggeringly wrong predictions of this nature (well, typically correct in a narrow sense and wrong in a broad sense). Jim Keller frequently talks about this and has a convincing theory as to why it happens: the industry is full of specialists who are all chasing one particular S-curve and fully understand to the point of conservatively believing in another S-curve or two. Inevitably, this gives them the impression that Moore's Law has just a few years of gas left -- however, it's actually a consequence of limits on human communication, curiosity, and cognition that determines the number of promising S-curves a typical engineer is thinking about. It's not a true evaluation of the supply of additional S-curves waiting in the wings. There's a limit somewhere out there but it's not really "in sight."
    - lucideer 4y ago
      > typically correct in a narrow sense and wrong in a broad sense I'm not quite sure what people think as noone seems to be stating it explicitly, but getting the impression some commenters here have their own personal definition of Moore's Law. The actual law is narrowly defined: if you're looking to discuss things related to it "in a broad sense" cool, but that isn't what I was referring to above. I was referring to Moore's Law. To be clear, Moore's Law is about processor manufacturing tolerances & states some pretty concrete predictions for rates of progress in the manufacturing process. It doesn't state anything related to compute (i.e what uses those processors can be put to), it's purely about the physical properties thereof.
  - Dalewyn 4y ago
    The first law of Moore's Law is that claims of its death are greatly exaggerated.

Don't worry too much because there is Moore's law to the rescue. NPUs benefit from new processes

mcculley 4y ago

Moore's Law makes it a good long term strategy for Apple. The GP is complaining about his battery life today.

lucideer 4y ago
I hope it's not disrespectful to point this out, less than 24 hours after his passing, but I don't think Gordon would object to my pointing out that Moore's Law has a finite length. Some have argued it expired up to 13 years ago; Moore himself predicted another 2 years or so.
- nwienert 4y ago
  I built an always on local OCR system that used ML on CPU/GPU a few years ago and I can say with confidence it doesn’t use much. We literally scanned your entire screen every two seconds and it used less than 1% in total, and this was before CoreML which is far more efficient. I think it’s FUD that it is that significant.
- jjoonathan 4y ago
  RF transmission and reception have been bumping smack up against physics limits for a long time. Regardless of whether or not Moore's Law is Dead, it is an extremely good bet that there is more juice left in compute than in RF. For instance, even the "specialized" ML hardware of today has a comfortable factor of 10 in further possible optimization and probably considerably more. Also, due to the fact that these innovations tend to compound, there isn't just more juice, there is e to the power of more juice left. "Moore's Law is Dead" is a bit of a joke in the hardware space because a staggering number of smart people have made staggeringly wrong predictions of this nature (well, typically correct in a narrow sense and wrong in a broad sense). Jim Keller frequently talks about this and has a convincing theory as to why it happens: the industry is full of specialists who are all chasing one particular S-curve and fully understand to the point of conservatively believing in another S-curve or two. Inevitably, this gives them the impression that Moore's Law has just a few years of gas left -- however, it's actually a consequence of limits on human communication, curiosity, and cognition that determines the number of promising S-curves a typical engineer is thinking about. It's not a true evaluation of the supply of additional S-curves waiting in the wings. There's a limit somewhere out there but it's not really "in sight."
  - lucideer 4y ago
    > typically correct in a narrow sense and wrong in a broad sense I'm not quite sure what people think as noone seems to be stating it explicitly, but getting the impression some commenters here have their own personal definition of Moore's Law. The actual law is narrowly defined: if you're looking to discuss things related to it "in a broad sense" cool, but that isn't what I was referring to above. I was referring to Moore's Law. To be clear, Moore's Law is about processor manufacturing tolerances & states some pretty concrete predictions for rates of progress in the manufacturing process. It doesn't state anything related to compute (i.e what uses those processors can be put to), it's purely about the physical properties thereof.
- Dalewyn 4y ago
  The first law of Moore's Law is that claims of its death are greatly exaggerated.