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Jim Keller on AI, RISC-V, Tenstorrent’s Move to Edge IP
- akkartik 3y agoDoes "IP" in this article mean "intellectual property"?
- gaudat 3y agoYes, "source code for chips / custom hardware" as a product is mostly referred as IPs. This includes HDL/RTL, netlists and GDS layout for a specific process, in increasing order of closeness to physical reality. Tangentially related, it is interesting to note that layouts and masks for manufacturing custom chips are not really copyrightable, so there is a thing named "mask rights" and (M) instead of (C) for them.
- IshKebab 3y agoYeah they're talking about hardware designs. Chip designers can buy "IP" from vendors for stuff they don't want to implement themselves, e.g. PCIe interfaces, embedded CPUs, etc. It's delivered as SystemVerilog code, probably obfuscated and maybe encrypted (yeah the encryption is theoretically worthless but I guess it is a sort of honesty / deniability thing).
- RealityVoid 3y agoIt does talk about Intellectual Property. But, apparently their chips are multiple cores on a fabric that talk over ethernet: https://youtu.be/32CRYenTcdw?t=1560 https://youtu.be/32CRYenTcdw?t=1560 They do this at the chip level apparently? Pretty nifty!
- yalogin 3y agoNever heard of this company till now. Wonder what other notable startups are out there. How does one keep tabs on startups?
- potatoboiler 3y agoI have been wondering the same thing; scouring Wellfound seems to yield little of interest, for example.
- zucker42 3y agoI first heard of TensTorrent from Dr. Ian Cutress's YT channel TechTechPotato. https://youtu.be/AFVDZeg4RVY https://youtu.be/AFVDZeg4RVY It's a good source for trends in hardware.
- re-thc 3y agoAnandtech has now lost its touch without Ian and some of the older staff. Such a piece of history now...
- hiddencost 3y agoYou're here. :P.
- KeyBoardG 3y agoSally Foxton-Ward (EETimes) and Ian Cuttress (TechTechPotato) started a podcast (only 2 episodes so far I think) listing through companies and what they do. I agree it is very hard to follow with companies coming and going. Not sure if linking is allowed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQzf_1AkNXw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQzf_1AkNXw
- tikkun 3y agoI have a list of some I'm keeping tabs on, I'll share it here. I do it out of a combination of personal obsession plus because I want to source angel investments. Note though that I'm very biased toward AI companies... Most established, clear product-market fit: - OpenAI - Midjourney - Character ai - Runway ML Ones that are interesting: - Adept AI - Modal, Banana.dev - new.computer - Magic.dev - Modular (Mojo) - tiny corp - Galileo - Hippo ML - Tenstorrent - contextual.ai - Chroma - e2b.dev - Steamship - Patterns.app - GGML Ones that I want to learn more about before deciding: - Inflection AI - GetLindy - Embra - Jam.dev - Vocode.dev That's about 50% of my list. Happy to clean up the rest and write a post if there's interest
- frozenport 3y agoKinda disappointed that Tenstorrent is pushing one of the world's most boring architectures. Its a regular chip with a few extra units bolted on the end, thats been copy and pasted in a grid. We've seen the same stuff from folks like Meta, even Tesla.
- mk_stjames 3y agoI noted how, when they first started, they talked mostly about developing 'AI accelerators' and it felt mostly like they were talking about big, GPGPU style chips to go head to head with nVidia. Thousands of small SIMD cores doing matrix multiplies, with fast memory and pcie. Maybe something halfway between Cerebras size and and Nvidia Hopper. A tall order but something really needed. Then at some point it feels like Jim got hooked on the idea of RISC-V everything, and they pivoted their messaging to talking about these more CPU-like chips with a main R-V64 8-wide decoding, state of the art OoO execution, etc. That sounds more like a RISC-V competitor to AMD Zen instead of a competitor to an nVidia GPU. And they they talk about that just being the interface to the AI chip later but... it really feels like that saw 'hey we can get all this RISC-V stuff for free essentially, and really take over the development of the spec, and that is easier than figuring out how to develop an GP AI chip and a stack that competes with CUDA to go with it, so that is easier to start...' I'm totally a non-expert though and the preceding is just what I've picked up from watching interviews with Jim (who I just find awesome to listen to).
- mtkhaos 3y agoLogic is simple inline with reducing power draw from a simplistic instruction set. Move into a space where we have rapid manufacturing for Specialized chips. Alongside the concept inherit to Nvidia's DPU and you have something very Interesting.
- kevin_thibedeau 3y agoIt makes more business sense to have more general purpose hardware that can be pivoted to other applications. Lots of AI ASIC vendors are going to go belly up in the coming years as their platforms fail to attract customers. Carving out a tiny niche with limited demand and no IP moat is very risky in the IC world.
- ramshanker 3y agoStill awaiting the retail release of that 75w PCIe card with out-of-box PyTorch support. If it can run, say StableDiffusion / LAAMA and family, many more use cases shall emerge. Obviously retail price will have to be competitive with Gaming Cards. My 2 cents.
- VHRanger 3y agoWe've been waiting on it for 2 years.... When I talked with TensTorrent people they claimed it was a $1000 A100 competitor with 16gb RAM. Still waiting on it.
- convivialdingo 3y agoWe're having great luck running Yolo 8 models on cheap intel n5105 boxes. 8gb ram, 256gb SSD, USB3 for ~$150... Ubuntu running ONNX gets us 600ms per frame. Not great, but good enough for now.
- FL33TW00D 3y agoI could most likely make it faster - depending on the YOLO used.
- ramshanker 3y agoI watched the video, apparently they are targeting $1000-$2000, and said even $500 sounds interesting. Maybe, just maybe a highly cut down version, 15 watt model could bring it down to RaspberryPi level price. $45. UsbC interface, if not x4 PCIe. Like, people buy it first, and decide what to do with it latter on. Guess I am going to far down the fantasy lane. ;)
- adgjlsfhk1 3y agoAlmost certainly not. Raspberry pi economics only work since they used a cheap of the shelf CPU. For the first few gens, I highly doubt anything below $200 will make any sense given the unit profit margins they will need.
- jlsfiew38 3y agoListening to Jim Keller talk about engineering makes me feel the same way I used to feel when I listened to Jeff Beck playing guitar. I didn't know if I was inspired or if I should quit.
- euiq 3y agoAfter listening to the interview, I totally get what you mean—what a wonderful perspective on computers he has.
- cmrdporcupine 3y agoSo calm and clear in exposition of complicated concepts.
- artisanspam 3y ago> His history includes stints at Apple, Tesla and AMD. Don’t forget his stint at Intel. I met him there and aside from his brilliance, the other thing that stuck out to me is how short he is.
- WoodenChair 3y ago> Don’t forget his stint at Intel. I met him there and aside from his brilliance, the other thing that stuck out to me is how short he is. I downvoted you because I have no idea how commenting on his height is significant to this discussion. In fact calling out a physical characteristic that is irrelevant is generally to make-fun. I'm not saying that's what you were doing here, but it's just totally irrelevant.
- euiq 3y agoHe doesn't even seem to be remarkably short in the first place. Here's a random picture that I found on the internet: <https://www.hwlegend.tech/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Jim-Keller-lascia-con-effetto-immediato-lazienda-Intel-1.jpg https://www.hwlegend.tech/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Jim-Kel...>
- evilturnip 3y agolol I'm always fascinated by the weird psychology motivating these comments. Must be a troll.
- artisanspam 3y agoIt wasn't an attempt to make fun of but I can see how you and others would think so. I simply thought it was an interesting characteristic of him because there is a trend for CEOs to be taller than average.
- klelatti 3y ago> “My belief is in the next 5 to 10 years, RISC-V will take over all the data centers,” Keller told EE Times, Isn't this essentially impossible?
- jylam 3y agoWhy ?
- klelatti 3y agoMy interpretation of 'take over' would be a majority of new server installs would be RISC-V based. There is a lead time for development, orders etc plus customers have to be content to switch to a new architecture. Amazon's Arm program started what 6ish years ago and they are at 20% installs (from my recollection).
- brucehoult 3y ago4 1/2 years. November 2018. 20% in 2022, quite possibly 25% by now.
- tambourine_man 3y agoYes, 5 years seems crazily optimistic to me. But this is Jim Keller and I’m a random internet guy.
- throwaway4good 3y agoI find a completely silly claim but I guess as a CEO you need to talk your book. Here is another interview with Jim Keller where he explains why instruction sets doesn't matter that much: https://www.anandtech.com/show/16762/an-anandtech-interview-with-jim-keller-laziest-person-at-tesla https://www.anandtech.com/show/16762/an-anandtech-interview-...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- DustinBrett 3y agoRISC architecture is going to change everything
- B1FF_PSUVM 3y agoWell, yeah, back in 1982: "The Berkeley RISC project delivered the RISC-I processor in 1982. Consisting of only 44,420 transistors (compared with averages of about 100,000 in newer CISC designs of the era), RISC-I had only 32 instructions, and yet completely outperformed any other single-chip design" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reduced_instruction_set_computer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reduced_instruction_set_comput...) Which was followed by x86 chips being used in nearly all PCs for forty years ...
- SirMaster 3y agoI wonder if it's not so much that Jim is so super smart that he can predict the future, or rather that he has such a huge network of peers in which he talks to and from that access to industry insider information can draw more accurate conclusions about the overall direction of the industry than most.
- elihu 3y ago> "His history includes stints at Apple, Tesla and AMD." Kind of a minor point, but it's weird they omitted Intel.
- andy_ppp 3y agoHere’s the correct link, EE Times website went crazy for me. https://youtu.be/_MrGNlXRi9M https://youtu.be/_MrGNlXRi9M
- sva_ 3y agoI liked the part in which he pointed out that on the Linux kernel, he could get a fix within an hour, while on NT he had to wait a year. His general emphasis on open source is very encouraging. I didn't know he came around like that.
- ftxbro 3y agowhen he talks about how non free software gave him problems with a printer driver https://youtu.be/_MrGNlXRi9M?t=558 https://youtu.be/_MrGNlXRi9M?t=558