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Before capital-S science we had dilettantes that did it for pure joy and curiosity -- not some misguided sense of true belief and absolutist, self-serving non-s
by throwawaysci3 4y ago
Before capital-S science we had dilettantes that did it for pure joy and curiosity -- not some misguided sense of true belief and absolutist, self-serving non-sense.
Andrew Kahng has credentials, numerous published papers, and held various positions that other people deem to be prestigious -- but what has the man done?
To me, academia and Kahng look like middle-managers endlessly jerking each other off, while other people are out actually accomplishing things.
- rhelz 4y agoWhat has this man done? There are probably only a handful of people who have done more to keep Moore's law going than Dr. Kahng. Without the research he and his many students have done, we wouldn't have these wonderful thousand-core chips my friend.
- protastus 4y agoI think this is overindexing on Dr. Kahng (and his accomplishments) and missing the bigger argument, which I'll restate as: if this research has merit, Google should apply it to their silicon design. Then they can have a paper about how ML helped their world class engineering team create an even better chip, save design time, etc. If the research translates to strong business results, it really doesn't matter what an external researcher thinks about it. While it's possible to slap a label of ML on a mediocre product for marketing purposes, a strong and experienced engineering team generally won't use a new tool if it doesn't make their workflow substantially better.
- warbaker 4y agoYou're completely right that if it has merit, Google should apply it to their silicon design. As it turns out, they do! This method has been used in TPU for multiple generations, including the most recent.