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I'm really disturbed by all of this - it doesn't quite check out with my that there are some quite capable players with kagillions of dollars who haven't manage

I'm really disturbed by all of this - it doesn't quite check out with my that there are some quite capable players with kagillions of dollars who haven't managed to, or more disturbingly, won't even put up the investment nor effort to break into the AI shenanigans space within the GPU market.

Solvency 3y ago
What exactly is "disturbing"?
- karim79 3y ago
  That nobody else seems to be trying hard enough, despite being well-funded and respectable companies. And until somebody does, we're stuck with NVidia/Cuda or half-working stuff that's way more hassle to prototype or build a product from.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - pavelstoev 3y ago
    To answer the question why there is not much competition, I would like to point out that the required expertise is very rare. Not specifically the chip design expertise but the expertise spanning both chip hardware and low-level software for such chip-specific hardware, that is all necessary to create the compilers, the frameworks and libraries and which can also plug-in well with the existing AI/ML ecosystem such as PyTorch.
Eji1700 3y ago
I don't think you understand just how insanely difficult it is to break into that market. There's a lot that goes into GPU's that makes it a very difficult industry to get going in. Even with apple money or something like that, it's a losing prospect because in the time it'll take you to get up and off the ground (which is FOREVER) your competition will crush you.
- karim79 3y ago
  > I don't think you understand just how insanely difficult it is to break into that market. You're right, I have no clue nor have I ever tried myself. > Even with apple money or something like that, it's a losing prospect because in the time it'll take you to get up and off the ground (which is FOREVER) your competition will crush you. This I find hard to believe, do you have a source or reference for that claim? Companies with that amount of cash are hardly going to be crushed by competition be it direct or indirect. Anyway, I'm talking more about the Intels and AMDs of this world. We have very lacklustre efforts from players I won't name <cough Intel> with their Zluda library (https://github.com/vosen/ZLUDA https://github.com/vosen/ZLUDA) which I got REALLY excited about, until I read the README.txt. Four contributors, last commit early 2021. Why, oh why, is it this bad?
  - singhrac 3y ago
    ZLUDA is a library written by a hobbyist. The comparison you are looking for is oneAPI. They don't have the messaging down, but Intel is good at software.
    - misnome 3y ago
      We really really tried to use oneAPI, for FPGA, working with intel directly. Every release would completely change some approach requiring restructuring. The only card with “free” compatibility was discontinued the week after we bought them, and the drivers stopped working on the same OS that oneAPI required. Constantly encountered showstopper bugs that led us to conclude that nobody outside Intel was using it. Some of them appeared to be live-patched on their Devcloud. Documentation was - reasonably good. But every few months Intel would move or restructure documentation links such that it was impossible to persistenly store a link to a useful document. Intel may be good at software - but they are utterly crap at actually maintaining a consistent ecosystem that isn’t painful to try and follow.
      - singhrac 3y ago
        This is disappointing to hear but very useful, thanks. I was considering buying a discrete Intel card for tinkering. Can I ask if the FPGA use case was ML-related? Feel free to email in profile.
sh34r 3y ago
By the time you get a fab up and running, the AI fad will be long dead.
ec109685 3y ago
Google has TPU, Amazon has their equivalent, so it’s wrong to say folks aren’t competing with them.
- ElectricalUnion 3y ago
  AFAIK the "most powerful" TPU that you can get is CRL-G18U-P3DF, and that is only capable of running quantized tensorflow lite models. Not sure how that is supposed to compete with those 700W TDP superchips.
blackoil 3y ago
If it had been "easy", China would have been able to do it. For them it is a existential that at nation level. Just money ain't enough to beat decade(s) of effort.

Solvency 3y ago

What exactly is "disturbing"?

karim79 3y ago
That nobody else seems to be trying hard enough, despite being well-funded and respectable companies. And until somebody does, we're stuck with NVidia/Cuda or half-working stuff that's way more hassle to prototype or build a product from.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- pavelstoev 3y ago
  To answer the question why there is not much competition, I would like to point out that the required expertise is very rare. Not specifically the chip design expertise but the expertise spanning both chip hardware and low-level software for such chip-specific hardware, that is all necessary to create the compilers, the frameworks and libraries and which can also plug-in well with the existing AI/ML ecosystem such as PyTorch.

Eji1700 3y ago

I don't think you understand just how insanely difficult it is to break into that market. There's a lot that goes into GPU's that makes it a very difficult industry to get going in. Even with apple money or something like that, it's a losing prospect because in the time it'll take you to get up and off the ground (which is FOREVER) your competition will crush you.

karim79 3y ago
> I don't think you understand just how insanely difficult it is to break into that market. You're right, I have no clue nor have I ever tried myself. > Even with apple money or something like that, it's a losing prospect because in the time it'll take you to get up and off the ground (which is FOREVER) your competition will crush you. This I find hard to believe, do you have a source or reference for that claim? Companies with that amount of cash are hardly going to be crushed by competition be it direct or indirect. Anyway, I'm talking more about the Intels and AMDs of this world. We have very lacklustre efforts from players I won't name <cough Intel> with their Zluda library (https://github.com/vosen/ZLUDA https://github.com/vosen/ZLUDA) which I got REALLY excited about, until I read the README.txt. Four contributors, last commit early 2021. Why, oh why, is it this bad?
- singhrac 3y ago
  ZLUDA is a library written by a hobbyist. The comparison you are looking for is oneAPI. They don't have the messaging down, but Intel is good at software.
  - misnome 3y ago
    We really really tried to use oneAPI, for FPGA, working with intel directly. Every release would completely change some approach requiring restructuring. The only card with “free” compatibility was discontinued the week after we bought them, and the drivers stopped working on the same OS that oneAPI required. Constantly encountered showstopper bugs that led us to conclude that nobody outside Intel was using it. Some of them appeared to be live-patched on their Devcloud. Documentation was - reasonably good. But every few months Intel would move or restructure documentation links such that it was impossible to persistenly store a link to a useful document. Intel may be good at software - but they are utterly crap at actually maintaining a consistent ecosystem that isn’t painful to try and follow.
    - singhrac 3y ago
      This is disappointing to hear but very useful, thanks. I was considering buying a discrete Intel card for tinkering. Can I ask if the FPGA use case was ML-related? Feel free to email in profile.

sh34r 3y ago

By the time you get a fab up and running, the AI fad will be long dead.

ec109685 3y ago

Google has TPU, Amazon has their equivalent, so it’s wrong to say folks aren’t competing with them.

ElectricalUnion 3y ago
AFAIK the "most powerful" TPU that you can get is CRL-G18U-P3DF, and that is only capable of running quantized tensorflow lite models. Not sure how that is supposed to compete with those 700W TDP superchips.

blackoil 3y ago

If it had been "easy", China would have been able to do it. For them it is a existential that at nation level. Just money ain't enough to beat decade(s) of effort.