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Nvidia has gotten lucky repeatedly. The GPUs were great for PC gaming and they were the top dog. The crypto boom was such an unexpected win for them partly beca

Nvidia has gotten lucky repeatedly. The GPUs were great for PC gaming and they were the top dog. The crypto boom was such an unexpected win for them partly because Intel killed off their competition by acquiring it. Then the AI boom is also a direct result of Intel killing off their competition but the acquisition is too far removed to credit it to that event. Unlike the crypto boom though, two factors make me think the AI thing was bound to go away quickly. Unlike crypto there is no mathematical lower bound for computation, and if you see technology's history we can tell the models are going to get better/smaller/faster overtime reducing our reliance on the GPU. Crypto was fringe but AI is fundamental to every software stack and every company. There is way too much money in this to just let Nvidia take it all. One way or another the reliance on it will be reduced

gradys 2y ago
Is it luck, or is scaling arithmetic genuinely a useful capability to offer the world?
nailer 2y ago
Money isn’t fringe, and the target for crypto is all transactions, rather than the existing model where you pay between two and 3.5% to a card company or other middleman.
- daveguy 2y ago
  Credit card companies averaged over 22,000 transactions per second in 2023 without ever having to raise the fee. How many is crypto even capable of processing? Processing without the fee going up? What fraud protection guarantees are offered to the parties of crypto transactions?
  - nailer 2y ago
    > Credit card companies averaged over 22,000 transactions per second in 2023 without ever having to raise the fee. Oh good because the fee is insanely high. > How many is crypto even capable of processing? 1M a second including voting transactions, divide by 4 for non-voting TPS. https://youtu.be/8sl3RcN2Rdk?si=saRTd-fQqG1-L_kb https://youtu.be/8sl3RcN2Rdk?si=saRTd-fQqG1-L_kb Transaction fee for a simple transfer is a fraction of a penny. I’m not sure if your last question is regarding consumer fraud or cryptographic fraud proofs so I won’t answer it until you clarify.
    - daveguy 2y ago
      Most money and most transactions aren't in Solana. Solana processes ~15B /day. Credit card companies, 15T. Solana has only ever reached 2k/s https://capitaloneshopping.com/research/number-of-credit-card-transactions/ https://capitaloneshopping.com/research/number-of-credit-car... Come on now, you know I was referring to consumer fraud. And there is no protection, unless you go off chain. Transaction fees in the most common coin, Bitcoin, vary wildly. The spike rose to over $100 at one point. https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_average_transaction_fee https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_average_transaction_f... Does everyone just need to get out of Bitcoin and get into Solana before a stampede happens? If Bitcoin crashes, all coins will crash, because there's hundreds of them to choose from. You're playing with tulips.
      - nailer 2y ago
        Yes, you are right. The traditional financial system is indeed more popular than crypto. I’m not sure what your point is, but yes, I absolutely agree. Obviously, that has no effect of the capacity of crypto to take over the volume of existing financial transactions and largely replace existing middle men. Random old tech from 2015 also had wildly fluctuating transaction fees. Likewise I can’t run call of duty on my ZX spectrum. I’m not sure what your point is there either, but yes, I agree. Obviously old tech being old doesn’t affect the capabilities of new tech, and the vast majority of payments are done on Solana rather than these old networks. > Come on now, you know I was referring to consumer fraud No I didn’t. But it was late. My point, that crypto already has the capacity and the low fees remains unscarred.
        daveguy 2y ago
        No response to Bitcoin being woefully inadequate in terms of capacity? Do you just think everyone is going to switch to your preferred coin? Oof. Oh, and nice indignation to avoid discussion of fraud protection. The only one relevant to both is fraud protection. Well, good luck to you.
        nailer 2y ago
01100011 2y ago
> the models are going to get better/smaller/faster overtime reducing our reliance on the GPU Yes, because we've seen that with other software. I no longer want a GPU for my computer because I play games from the 90s and the CPU has grown powerful enough to suffice... except that's not the case at all. Software grew in complexity and quality with available compute resources and we have no reason to think "AI" will be any different. Are you satisfied with today's models and their inaccuracies and hallucinations? Why do you think we will solve those problems without more HW?
- dgemm 2y ago
  I think the point was not that we won't still use a lot of hardware, it's that it won't necessarily always be Nvidia. Nvidia got lucky when both crypto and AI arrived because it had the best available ready-made thing to do the job, but it's not like it's the best possible thing. Crypto eventually got its ASICs that made GPUs uncompetitive after all.
- atrus 2y ago
  Honestly, you'd be shocked at how much gaming you can get done on the integrated gpus that are just shoved in these days. Sure, you won't be playing the most graphically demanding things, but think of platforms like the Switch, or games like Stardew. You can easily go without a dedicated GPU and still have a plethora of games. And as for AI, there's probably so much room for improvement on the software side that it will probably be the case that the smarter, more performant AIs will not necessarily have to be on the top of the line hardware.
  - sdenton4 2y ago
    Just look at how much insects get done with just a few neurons to run together...
    - 01100011 2y ago
      Those neurons aren't anything remotely similar to a "neuron" in an LLM, for instance.
tw1984 2y ago
> Unlike crypto there is no mathematical lower bound for computation this is what I feel, but is there any scientific proof on that?
- brickfaced 2y ago
  Yes, the human brain

gradys 2y ago

Is it luck, or is scaling arithmetic genuinely a useful capability to offer the world?

nailer 2y ago

Money isn’t fringe, and the target for crypto is all transactions, rather than the existing model where you pay between two and 3.5% to a card company or other middleman.

daveguy 2y ago
Credit card companies averaged over 22,000 transactions per second in 2023 without ever having to raise the fee. How many is crypto even capable of processing? Processing without the fee going up? What fraud protection guarantees are offered to the parties of crypto transactions?
- nailer 2y ago
  > Credit card companies averaged over 22,000 transactions per second in 2023 without ever having to raise the fee. Oh good because the fee is insanely high. > How many is crypto even capable of processing? 1M a second including voting transactions, divide by 4 for non-voting TPS. https://youtu.be/8sl3RcN2Rdk?si=saRTd-fQqG1-L_kb https://youtu.be/8sl3RcN2Rdk?si=saRTd-fQqG1-L_kb Transaction fee for a simple transfer is a fraction of a penny. I’m not sure if your last question is regarding consumer fraud or cryptographic fraud proofs so I won’t answer it until you clarify.
  - daveguy 2y ago
    Most money and most transactions aren't in Solana. Solana processes ~15B /day. Credit card companies, 15T. Solana has only ever reached 2k/s https://capitaloneshopping.com/research/number-of-credit-card-transactions/ https://capitaloneshopping.com/research/number-of-credit-car... Come on now, you know I was referring to consumer fraud. And there is no protection, unless you go off chain. Transaction fees in the most common coin, Bitcoin, vary wildly. The spike rose to over $100 at one point. https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_average_transaction_fee https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_average_transaction_f... Does everyone just need to get out of Bitcoin and get into Solana before a stampede happens? If Bitcoin crashes, all coins will crash, because there's hundreds of them to choose from. You're playing with tulips.
    - nailer 2y ago
      Yes, you are right. The traditional financial system is indeed more popular than crypto. I’m not sure what your point is, but yes, I absolutely agree. Obviously, that has no effect of the capacity of crypto to take over the volume of existing financial transactions and largely replace existing middle men. Random old tech from 2015 also had wildly fluctuating transaction fees. Likewise I can’t run call of duty on my ZX spectrum. I’m not sure what your point is there either, but yes, I agree. Obviously old tech being old doesn’t affect the capabilities of new tech, and the vast majority of payments are done on Solana rather than these old networks. > Come on now, you know I was referring to consumer fraud No I didn’t. But it was late. My point, that crypto already has the capacity and the low fees remains unscarred.
      - daveguy 2y ago
        No response to Bitcoin being woefully inadequate in terms of capacity? Do you just think everyone is going to switch to your preferred coin? Oof. Oh, and nice indignation to avoid discussion of fraud protection. The only one relevant to both is fraud protection. Well, good luck to you.
        nailer 2y ago

01100011 2y ago

> the models are going to get better/smaller/faster overtime reducing our reliance on the GPU Yes, because we've seen that with other software. I no longer want a GPU for my computer because I play games from the 90s and the CPU has grown powerful enough to suffice... except that's not the case at all. Software grew in complexity and quality with available compute resources and we have no reason to think "AI" will be any different. Are you satisfied with today's models and their inaccuracies and hallucinations? Why do you think we will solve those problems without more HW?

dgemm 2y ago
I think the point was not that we won't still use a lot of hardware, it's that it won't necessarily always be Nvidia. Nvidia got lucky when both crypto and AI arrived because it had the best available ready-made thing to do the job, but it's not like it's the best possible thing. Crypto eventually got its ASICs that made GPUs uncompetitive after all.
atrus 2y ago
Honestly, you'd be shocked at how much gaming you can get done on the integrated gpus that are just shoved in these days. Sure, you won't be playing the most graphically demanding things, but think of platforms like the Switch, or games like Stardew. You can easily go without a dedicated GPU and still have a plethora of games. And as for AI, there's probably so much room for improvement on the software side that it will probably be the case that the smarter, more performant AIs will not necessarily have to be on the top of the line hardware.
- sdenton4 2y ago
  Just look at how much insects get done with just a few neurons to run together...
  - 01100011 2y ago
    Those neurons aren't anything remotely similar to a "neuron" in an LLM, for instance.

tw1984 2y ago

> Unlike crypto there is no mathematical lower bound for computation this is what I feel, but is there any scientific proof on that?

brickfaced 2y ago
Yes, the human brain