3 ms·

"Platform company" means multi-chip in this case? Seems logical since it's becoming impractical to cram so many transistors on a single die.

1oooqooq 3y ago
no it means rent seeking. imagine aws if they also sold all computers in the world, now you can only rent from them
- throwaway11460 3y ago
  So like IBM at the beginning of computers
- maximus-decimus 3y ago
  "For only 100$ a month, you'll be able to turn on the gpu you already paid for" --Nvidia, pretty soon
  - bpye 3y ago
    This is sort of already a reality. Their vGPU functionality (partitioning a single physical GPU into multiple virtual GPUs) is already separately licensed - https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/data-center/buy-grid/ https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/data-center/buy-grid/ And that's once you've bought an expensive Tesla/Quadro GPU too.
    - 1oooqooq 3y ago
      good. that only impact disgusting cloud providers who are hoarding all hardware everywhere. no sympathy for them.
0xcde4c3db 3y ago
I don't really understand the bird's-eye view of the product line, but judging by some of the raw physical numbers and configurations Jensen was bragging about, it means that they want to basically play the mainframe game of locking high-end applications into proprietary middleware running on proprietary chassis with proprietary cluster interconnect (hello, Mellanox acquisiton).
- wtallis 3y ago
  The lock-in is more of a bonus for them. The underlying problem is that it's impossible to build a chip big enough, or even a collection of chiplets big enough. Training LLMs requires more silicon than can fit on one PCB, so they need an interconnect that is as fast as possible. With interconnect bandwidth as a critical bottleneck, they're not going to wait around for the industry to standardize on a suitable interconnect when they can build what they need to be ready to ship alongside the chips they need to connect.
  - l33tman 3y ago
    Cerebras: -Hold my beer
- anon291 3y ago
  In this case the interconnects are also doing compute.
dweekly 3y ago
It means all the main chips required for a large-scale datacenter. And many of the layers of software on top of it. Hardware: * The GPU * The GPU-GPU Fabric (NVLINK) * The CPU * The NIC * The Network Fabric (infiniband) * The Switch And that's not even starting to get into the many layers of the software stack (CUDA, Riva, Megatron, Omniverse) that they're contributing and working to get folks to build on.

1oooqooq 3y ago

no it means rent seeking. imagine aws if they also sold all computers in the world, now you can only rent from them

throwaway11460 3y ago
So like IBM at the beginning of computers
maximus-decimus 3y ago
"For only 100$ a month, you'll be able to turn on the gpu you already paid for" --Nvidia, pretty soon
- bpye 3y ago
  This is sort of already a reality. Their vGPU functionality (partitioning a single physical GPU into multiple virtual GPUs) is already separately licensed - https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/data-center/buy-grid/ https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/data-center/buy-grid/ And that's once you've bought an expensive Tesla/Quadro GPU too.
  - 1oooqooq 3y ago
    good. that only impact disgusting cloud providers who are hoarding all hardware everywhere. no sympathy for them.

0xcde4c3db 3y ago

I don't really understand the bird's-eye view of the product line, but judging by some of the raw physical numbers and configurations Jensen was bragging about, it means that they want to basically play the mainframe game of locking high-end applications into proprietary middleware running on proprietary chassis with proprietary cluster interconnect (hello, Mellanox acquisiton).

wtallis 3y ago
The lock-in is more of a bonus for them. The underlying problem is that it's impossible to build a chip big enough, or even a collection of chiplets big enough. Training LLMs requires more silicon than can fit on one PCB, so they need an interconnect that is as fast as possible. With interconnect bandwidth as a critical bottleneck, they're not going to wait around for the industry to standardize on a suitable interconnect when they can build what they need to be ready to ship alongside the chips they need to connect.
- l33tman 3y ago
  Cerebras: -Hold my beer
anon291 3y ago
In this case the interconnects are also doing compute.

dweekly 3y ago

It means all the main chips required for a large-scale datacenter. And many of the layers of software on top of it. Hardware: * The GPU * The GPU-GPU Fabric (NVLINK) * The CPU * The NIC * The Network Fabric (infiniband) * The Switch And that's not even starting to get into the many layers of the software stack (CUDA, Riva, Megatron, Omniverse) that they're contributing and working to get folks to build on.