5 ms·

Did you watch the Nvidia 2024 GTC keynote[1]? The CEO of NVIDIA was pretty clear: Nvidia's focus is now on selling Blackwell AI Factories. According to some n

Did you watch the Nvidia 2024 GTC keynote[1]? The CEO of NVIDIA was pretty clear: Nvidia's focus is now on selling Blackwell AI Factories. According to some napkin math, each of these Blackwell AI factories will have an annual power bill of roughly $8,000,000 USD and if you do a little apples to oranges comparison will outperform the computer that's currently #1 on the supercomputing top 500 (Frontier at Oak Ridge) by one to two orders of magnitude. for comparison, over the past fifteen years, we've seen 3 orders of magnitude improvement in the supercomputing top 500. (from roadrunner in 2008 to frontier in 2024). Nvidia is going to do 1 to 2 orders of magnitude improvement instantaneously. Nvidia's core market has shifted dramatically. There is no competition. [1]: https://www.nvidia.com/gtc/keynote/ https://www.nvidia.com/gtc/keynote/

nullc 2y ago
When moving into a market where there are no competitors one should be wary that this may be because there are no customers.
- anonylizard 2y ago
  That's not very convincing against Nvidia. Since they single handedly created the modern AI market through CUDA.
- schaefer 2y ago
  The topic of customer interest is addressed at timestamp 59 minutes and zero seconds of the keynote. By my count, 49 corporate logos were shown as launch partners. At one point in the talk the CEO claims that “Blackwell will be Nvidia’s most successful product ever”. — And again, the product he’s talking about is a data centers packed with 56 racks…
picojoulebits 2y ago
Not to rain on the parade here but nvidia is not going to haul a 1 to 2 order of magnitude in a single jump. Top500 measures fp64, nvidia likes to quote fp8. Blackwell is actually a regression on fp64 performance to provide more die space for AI compute. This isn't to say the silicon isn't good just different goals being hit.
- schaefer 2y ago
  I’m aware. In the keynote Nvidia is quoting FP4 performance for Blackwell specifically. Frontier and every computer that has ever hit the supercomputer top 500 is measuring fp64. This is why I qualified my statement above by saying if you’re willing to compare apples and oranges. But I think this is where things open up to debate (and/or personal interpretation). My view is, if all you care about is AI workload (Specifically LLMs), then you really are seeing a full two orders of magnitude improvement. And if we are trying to get a feel for the space, and what that even means, then there really is nothing else to compare Blackwell to other than frontier, in terms of scale alone. Above I say “one or two orders of magnitude”, the “one order of magnitude” is a value I got by taking Blackwell’s FP4 values and dividing by 16, to try to conceptually convert back to a value that can be compared to fp64. — I’m perfectly happy to admit that all I’m really capable of doing here is using estimates to compare a completely new thing (the new compute architecture of Blackwell) to what came before it (the majority of the history of the supercomputing 500). But that’s okay, because that’s my only goal. —- Believe me, I get it. Blackwell will never post a linpack score. Blackwell will never run big scientific computing jobs like… global weather simulations. But as computer science nerds, how could we not be excited to see such a big move: changing the computer architecture to better suit a specific compute workload (LLMs)? I know Bitcoin has its asic processors, but to me Blackwell’s mission statement of “computing intelligence” is a lot more interesting.

nullc 2y ago

When moving into a market where there are no competitors one should be wary that this may be because there are no customers.

anonylizard 2y ago
That's not very convincing against Nvidia. Since they single handedly created the modern AI market through CUDA.
schaefer 2y ago
The topic of customer interest is addressed at timestamp 59 minutes and zero seconds of the keynote. By my count, 49 corporate logos were shown as launch partners. At one point in the talk the CEO claims that “Blackwell will be Nvidia’s most successful product ever”. — And again, the product he’s talking about is a data centers packed with 56 racks…

picojoulebits 2y ago

Not to rain on the parade here but nvidia is not going to haul a 1 to 2 order of magnitude in a single jump. Top500 measures fp64, nvidia likes to quote fp8. Blackwell is actually a regression on fp64 performance to provide more die space for AI compute. This isn't to say the silicon isn't good just different goals being hit.

schaefer 2y ago
I’m aware. In the keynote Nvidia is quoting FP4 performance for Blackwell specifically. Frontier and every computer that has ever hit the supercomputer top 500 is measuring fp64. This is why I qualified my statement above by saying if you’re willing to compare apples and oranges. But I think this is where things open up to debate (and/or personal interpretation). My view is, if all you care about is AI workload (Specifically LLMs), then you really are seeing a full two orders of magnitude improvement. And if we are trying to get a feel for the space, and what that even means, then there really is nothing else to compare Blackwell to other than frontier, in terms of scale alone. Above I say “one or two orders of magnitude”, the “one order of magnitude” is a value I got by taking Blackwell’s FP4 values and dividing by 16, to try to conceptually convert back to a value that can be compared to fp64. — I’m perfectly happy to admit that all I’m really capable of doing here is using estimates to compare a completely new thing (the new compute architecture of Blackwell) to what came before it (the majority of the history of the supercomputing 500). But that’s okay, because that’s my only goal. —- Believe me, I get it. Blackwell will never post a linpack score. Blackwell will never run big scientific computing jobs like… global weather simulations. But as computer science nerds, how could we not be excited to see such a big move: changing the computer architecture to better suit a specific compute workload (LLMs)? I know Bitcoin has its asic processors, but to me Blackwell’s mission statement of “computing intelligence” is a lot more interesting.