5 ms·

The fact that the EDA companies are garbage in no way mitigates the fact that Google continues to peddle unsubstantiated snake oil. This is easy to debunk from

by bsder 2y ago

The fact that the EDA companies are garbage in no way mitigates the fact that Google continues to peddle unsubstantiated snake oil. This is easy to debunk from the Google side: release a tool. If you don't want to release a tool, then it's unsubstantiated and you don't get to publish. Simple. That having been said: 1) None of these "AI" tools have yet demonstrated the ability to classify "This is datapath", "This is array logic", "This is random logic". This is the BIG win. And it won't just be a couple of percentage points in area or a couple of days saved when it works--it will be 25%+ in area and months in time. 2) Saving a couple of percentage points in random logic isn't impressive. If I have the compute power to run EDA tools with a couple of different random seeds, at least one run will likely be a couple percentage points better. 3) I really don't understand why they don't do stuff on analog/RF. The patterns are smaller and much better matches to the kind of reinforcement learning that current "AI" is suited for. I put this snake oil in the same category as "financial advice"--if it worked, they wouldn't be sharing it and would simply be printing money by taking advantage of it.

throwaway2037 2y ago
> EDA companies are garbage I don't understand this comment. Can you please explain? Are they unethical? Or do they write poor software?
- bsder 2y ago
  Yes and yes. EDA companies are gatekeeping monopolies. They absolutely abuse their monopoly position to extract huge chunks of money out of companies, and are pretty much single-handedly responsible for the fact that the hardware startup ecosystem is moribund compared to that of the software startup ecosystem. They have been horrible liars about performance and benchmarketing for decades. They dragged their feet miserably over releasing Linux versions of their software because they were extracting money based upon number of CPU licenses (everything was on Sparc which was vastly inferior). Their software hasn't really improved all that much over decades--mostly they benefited from Moore's Law. They have made a point of stifling attempts at interoperability and open data exchange. They have bought lots of competitors mostly to just shut them down. I can go on and on. The EDA companies aren't quite Oracle--but they're not far off. This is one of the reasons why Google is getting pounded over this--maybe even unfairly. People in the field are super sensitive about bullshit claims from EDA vendors--we've heard them all and been on the receiving end of the stick far too many times.
  - alexey-salmin 2y ago
    > pretty much single-handedly responsible for the fact that the hardware startup ecosystem is moribund compared to that of the software startup ecosystem. This was the case before EDA companies even appeared. Hardware is hard because it's manufacturing. You can't "iterate quickly", every iteration costs millions of dollars and so does every mistake.
    - bsder 2y ago
      > Hardware is hard because it's manufacturing. You can't "iterate quickly", every iteration costs millions of dollars and so does every mistake. This is true for injection molding and yet we do that all the time in small businesses. A mask set for an older technology can be in the range of $50K-$100K. That's right about the same price as injection molds. The main difference is that Solidworks is about $25K while Cadence, et al, is about a megabuck.
  - octoberfranklin 2y ago
    and are pretty much single-handedly responsible for the fact that the hardware startup ecosystem is moribund Yes but not single-handedly -- it's them and the foundries, hand-in-hand. No startup can compete with Synopsys because TSMC doesn't give out the true design rules to anybody smaller than Apple for finfet processes. Essentially their DRC+LVS software has become a DRM-encoded version of the design rule manual.
  - teleforce 2y ago
    > The EDA companies aren't quite Oracle--but they're not far off. Agreed with most you mentioned but not about EDA companies are not worst than Oracle, at least Oracle is still supporting popular and useful open source projects namely MySQL, Virtualbox, etc. What open-source design software these EDA companies are supporting currently although most of their software originated from open source EDA software from UC Berkeley, etc?
joshuamorton 2y ago
As someone who has no skin in the game and is only loosely following this, there is a tool: https://github.com/google-research/circuit_training https://github.com/google-research/circuit_training, the detractors claim to not be able to reproduce Google's results (what Dean is commenting on) with it, Google and 1-2 other companies claim to be using it internally to success (e.g. see the end of this article: https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/how-alphachip-transformed-computer-chip-design/ https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/how-alphachip-transfor...).
- bsder 2y ago
  There are benchmarks in this space. You can also bring your chip designs into the open and show what happens with different tools. You can run the algorithm on the placed designs that you sponsor for open source VLSI to show how much better they are. None of this has been done. This is table stakes if you want to talk about your EDA algorithm advancement. If this weren't coming out of Google, everybody would laugh it out of the room (see what happened to a similar publication with similar claims from a Chinese source--everybody dismissed it out of hand--rightfully so even though that paper was MUCH better than anything Google has promulgated). Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Nothing about AlphaChip even reaches ordinary evidence. If they hadn't gotten a publication in Nature for effectively a failure, this would be way less contentious.
  - throwaway2037 2y ago
    > Nothing about AlphaChip even reaches ordinary evidence. You reply is wildly confident and dismissive. If correct, why did Nature choose to publish?
    - rowanG077 2y ago
      Can you stop with this pure appeal to authority. Publishing in nature is not proof it works. It's only proof the paper has packaged the claim it works semi well.
      - 2y ago
xpe 2y ago
> Google continues to peddle unsubstantiated snake oil I read your comment, but I'm not following -- or maybe I disagree with it -- I'm not sure yet. "Snake oil" is an emotionally loaded term that raises the temperature of the conversation. That usually makes having a conversation harder. From my point of view, AlphaGo, AlphaZero, AlphaFold were significant achievements. Agree? Are you claiming that AlphaChip is not? Are you claiming they are perpetrating some kind of deception or exaggeration? Your numbered points seem like valid criticisms (I haven't evaluated them closely), but even if true, I don't see how they support your "snake oil" claim.
- griomnib 2y ago
  They have literally been caught faking AI demos, they brought distrust on themselves.
  - rajup 2y ago
    Really not sure how you’re conflating product demos which are known to be pie in the sky across the industry (not just Google) with peer reviewed research published in journals. Super basic distinction imho.
    - stackghost 2y ago
      >peer reviewed research published in journals Peer review doesn't mean as much as Elsevier would like you to believe. Plenty of peer-reviewed research is absolute trash.
      - throwaway2037 2y ago
        All of the highest impact papers authored by DeepMind and Google Brain have appeared in Nature, which is the gold standard for peer-reviewed natural science research. What exactly are you trying to claim about Google's peer-reviewed papers?
        stackghost 2y ago
xpe 2y ago
> if it worked, they wouldn't be sharing it and would simply be printing money by taking advantage of it. Sure, there are some techniques in financial markets that are only valuable when they are not widely known. But claiming this pattern applies universally is incorrect. Publishing a technique doesn't prove it doesn't work. (Stating it this way makes it fairly obvious.) DeepMind, like many AI research labs, publish important and useful research. One might ask "is a lab leaving money off the table by publishing?". Perhaps a better question is "What 'game' is the lab playing and over what time scale?".
lobochrome 2y ago
Agreed, in particular on #2 Given infinite time and compute - maybe the approach is significantly better. But that’s just not practical. So unless you see dramatic shifts - no one is going to throw away proven results on your new approach because of the TTM penalty if it goes wrong. The EDA industry is (has to be) ultra conservative.
- throwaway2037 2y ago
  > The EDA industry is (has to be) ultra conservative. What is special about EDA that requires it to be more conservative?
  - achierius 2y ago
    Taping out a chip is an incredibly expensive (7-8 figure) fixed cost. If the chips that come out have too many bugs (say because your PD tools missed up some wiring for 1 in 10,000 blocks) then that money is gone. If you're Intel this is enough to make people doubt the health of your firm; if you're a startup, you're just done.
raverbashing 2y ago
Honestly this does not compute > None of these "AI" tools have yet demonstrated the ability to classify "This is datapath", "This is array logic", "This is random logic". Sounds like a good objective, one that could be added to training parameters. Or maybe it isn't needed (AI can 'understand' some concepts without explicitly tagging) > If I have the compute power to run EDA tools with a couple of different random seeds, at least one run will likely be a couple percentage points better. Then do it?! How long does it actually take to run? I know EDA tools creators are bad at some kinds of code optimization (and yes, it's hard) but let's say for a company like Intel, if it takes 10 days to rerun a chip to get 1% better, that sounds like a worthy tradeoff. > I put this snake oil in the same category as "financial advice"--if it worked, they wouldn't be sharing it and would simply be printing money by taking advantage of it. Yeah I don't think you understood the problem here. Good financial advice is about balancing risks and returns.
throwup238 2y ago
> if it worked, they wouldn't be sharing it and would simply be printing money by taking advantage of it. This is a fallacious argument. A better chip design process does not eliminate all other risks like product-market fit or the upfront cost of making masks or chronic mismanagement.

by bsder 2y ago

throwaway2037 2y ago

> EDA companies are garbage I don't understand this comment. Can you please explain? Are they unethical? Or do they write poor software?

bsder 2y ago
Yes and yes. EDA companies are gatekeeping monopolies. They absolutely abuse their monopoly position to extract huge chunks of money out of companies, and are pretty much single-handedly responsible for the fact that the hardware startup ecosystem is moribund compared to that of the software startup ecosystem. They have been horrible liars about performance and benchmarketing for decades. They dragged their feet miserably over releasing Linux versions of their software because they were extracting money based upon number of CPU licenses (everything was on Sparc which was vastly inferior). Their software hasn't really improved all that much over decades--mostly they benefited from Moore's Law. They have made a point of stifling attempts at interoperability and open data exchange. They have bought lots of competitors mostly to just shut them down. I can go on and on. The EDA companies aren't quite Oracle--but they're not far off. This is one of the reasons why Google is getting pounded over this--maybe even unfairly. People in the field are super sensitive about bullshit claims from EDA vendors--we've heard them all and been on the receiving end of the stick far too many times.
- alexey-salmin 2y ago
  > pretty much single-handedly responsible for the fact that the hardware startup ecosystem is moribund compared to that of the software startup ecosystem. This was the case before EDA companies even appeared. Hardware is hard because it's manufacturing. You can't "iterate quickly", every iteration costs millions of dollars and so does every mistake.
  - bsder 2y ago
    > Hardware is hard because it's manufacturing. You can't "iterate quickly", every iteration costs millions of dollars and so does every mistake. This is true for injection molding and yet we do that all the time in small businesses. A mask set for an older technology can be in the range of $50K-$100K. That's right about the same price as injection molds. The main difference is that Solidworks is about $25K while Cadence, et al, is about a megabuck.
- octoberfranklin 2y ago
  and are pretty much single-handedly responsible for the fact that the hardware startup ecosystem is moribund Yes but not single-handedly -- it's them and the foundries, hand-in-hand. No startup can compete with Synopsys because TSMC doesn't give out the true design rules to anybody smaller than Apple for finfet processes. Essentially their DRC+LVS software has become a DRM-encoded version of the design rule manual.
- teleforce 2y ago
  > The EDA companies aren't quite Oracle--but they're not far off. Agreed with most you mentioned but not about EDA companies are not worst than Oracle, at least Oracle is still supporting popular and useful open source projects namely MySQL, Virtualbox, etc. What open-source design software these EDA companies are supporting currently although most of their software originated from open source EDA software from UC Berkeley, etc?

joshuamorton 2y ago

As someone who has no skin in the game and is only loosely following this, there is a tool: https://github.com/google-research/circuit_training https://github.com/google-research/circuit_training, the detractors claim to not be able to reproduce Google's results (what Dean is commenting on) with it, Google and 1-2 other companies claim to be using it internally to success (e.g. see the end of this article: https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/how-alphachip-transformed-computer-chip-design/ https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/how-alphachip-transfor...).

bsder 2y ago
There are benchmarks in this space. You can also bring your chip designs into the open and show what happens with different tools. You can run the algorithm on the placed designs that you sponsor for open source VLSI to show how much better they are. None of this has been done. This is table stakes if you want to talk about your EDA algorithm advancement. If this weren't coming out of Google, everybody would laugh it out of the room (see what happened to a similar publication with similar claims from a Chinese source--everybody dismissed it out of hand--rightfully so even though that paper was MUCH better than anything Google has promulgated). Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Nothing about AlphaChip even reaches ordinary evidence. If they hadn't gotten a publication in Nature for effectively a failure, this would be way less contentious.
- throwaway2037 2y ago
  > Nothing about AlphaChip even reaches ordinary evidence. You reply is wildly confident and dismissive. If correct, why did Nature choose to publish?
  - rowanG077 2y ago
    Can you stop with this pure appeal to authority. Publishing in nature is not proof it works. It's only proof the paper has packaged the claim it works semi well.
    - 2y ago

xpe 2y ago

> Google continues to peddle unsubstantiated snake oil I read your comment, but I'm not following -- or maybe I disagree with it -- I'm not sure yet. "Snake oil" is an emotionally loaded term that raises the temperature of the conversation. That usually makes having a conversation harder. From my point of view, AlphaGo, AlphaZero, AlphaFold were significant achievements. Agree? Are you claiming that AlphaChip is not? Are you claiming they are perpetrating some kind of deception or exaggeration? Your numbered points seem like valid criticisms (I haven't evaluated them closely), but even if true, I don't see how they support your "snake oil" claim.

griomnib 2y ago
They have literally been caught faking AI demos, they brought distrust on themselves.
- rajup 2y ago
  Really not sure how you’re conflating product demos which are known to be pie in the sky across the industry (not just Google) with peer reviewed research published in journals. Super basic distinction imho.
  - stackghost 2y ago
    >peer reviewed research published in journals Peer review doesn't mean as much as Elsevier would like you to believe. Plenty of peer-reviewed research is absolute trash.
    - throwaway2037 2y ago
      All of the highest impact papers authored by DeepMind and Google Brain have appeared in Nature, which is the gold standard for peer-reviewed natural science research. What exactly are you trying to claim about Google's peer-reviewed papers?
      - stackghost 2y ago

xpe 2y ago

> if it worked, they wouldn't be sharing it and would simply be printing money by taking advantage of it. Sure, there are some techniques in financial markets that are only valuable when they are not widely known. But claiming this pattern applies universally is incorrect. Publishing a technique doesn't prove it doesn't work. (Stating it this way makes it fairly obvious.) DeepMind, like many AI research labs, publish important and useful research. One might ask "is a lab leaving money off the table by publishing?". Perhaps a better question is "What 'game' is the lab playing and over what time scale?".

lobochrome 2y ago

Agreed, in particular on #2 Given infinite time and compute - maybe the approach is significantly better. But that’s just not practical. So unless you see dramatic shifts - no one is going to throw away proven results on your new approach because of the TTM penalty if it goes wrong. The EDA industry is (has to be) ultra conservative.

throwaway2037 2y ago
> The EDA industry is (has to be) ultra conservative. What is special about EDA that requires it to be more conservative?
- achierius 2y ago
  Taping out a chip is an incredibly expensive (7-8 figure) fixed cost. If the chips that come out have too many bugs (say because your PD tools missed up some wiring for 1 in 10,000 blocks) then that money is gone. If you're Intel this is enough to make people doubt the health of your firm; if you're a startup, you're just done.

raverbashing 2y ago

Honestly this does not compute > None of these "AI" tools have yet demonstrated the ability to classify "This is datapath", "This is array logic", "This is random logic". Sounds like a good objective, one that could be added to training parameters. Or maybe it isn't needed (AI can 'understand' some concepts without explicitly tagging) > If I have the compute power to run EDA tools with a couple of different random seeds, at least one run will likely be a couple percentage points better. Then do it?! How long does it actually take to run? I know EDA tools creators are bad at some kinds of code optimization (and yes, it's hard) but let's say for a company like Intel, if it takes 10 days to rerun a chip to get 1% better, that sounds like a worthy tradeoff. > I put this snake oil in the same category as "financial advice"--if it worked, they wouldn't be sharing it and would simply be printing money by taking advantage of it. Yeah I don't think you understood the problem here. Good financial advice is about balancing risks and returns.

throwup238 2y ago

> if it worked, they wouldn't be sharing it and would simply be printing money by taking advantage of it. This is a fallacious argument. A better chip design process does not eliminate all other risks like product-market fit or the upfront cost of making masks or chronic mismanagement.