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I thought George was going to save AMD. Now he's saving tenstorrent? Busy guy!

by IncreasePosts 1y ago

add-sub-mul-div 1y ago
Don't forget he was also going to save Twitter but noped out after a few weeks.
- henning 1y ago
  Maintaining and improving existing software sure is boring and often thankless compared to starting flashy new projects where you get to make and understand all the major decisions up front.
  - Aurornis 1y ago
    > Maintaining and improving existing software sure is boring and often thankless There was a big public episode where he appealed to Elon Musk for a job at Twitter, was given an “internship”, tried soliciting public submissions for the code he was tasked with, left a lot of people shocked that he was struggled with basic FE work, and then resigned 4 weeks in: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34074344 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34074344
moralestapia 1y ago
geohot has a loud mouth ... but he has earned the cred and walks the walk. I wish there was a thousand more geohots than all the mediocre middle-managers at AMD or tenstorrent; or people who have never done anything beyond posting snarky comments in online forums.
- Aurornis 1y ago
  > geohot has a loud mouth ... but he has earned the cred Sadly, I think geohot is an example of someone who earned some cred for impressive accomplishments in the past and then tried to cash in that cred over and over again in unrelated future domains. His brief and very public flame out at Twitter after mysteriously abandoning another project and the bold claims about his AMD work that never really translated to anything have really detracted from whatever past “cred” he built up. I really hope he can find a new niche and succeed, but until then it might be time to lie low on social media and avoid throwing more mud.
  - moralestapia 1y ago
    >geohot has a loud mouth ... but he has earned the cred >I think geohot is an example of someone who earned some cred for impressive accomplishments in the past [...] Huh? Yeah, that's what I wrote.
    - Aurornis 1y ago
      > Huh? Yeah, that's what I wrote. You cut out the part of my post where I made my point. Earning “cred” for past accomplishments doesn’t give someone a free pass forever to be a loud mouth.
      - moralestapia 1y ago
        Then I don't get the point you're trying to make. >Earning “cred” for past accomplishments doesn’t give someone a free pass forever to be a loud mouth. What the ... ? Sorry, but you don't have to earn that. I suggest you familiarize yourself with human rights, particularly if you won the lottery and were born in a country like the US; it is very clearly written, in unambiguous terms, the rights their citizens enjoy. And still, I'd rather listen to geohot rambling about whatever he wants to say, than some randos on the internet who have accomplished nothing but "arguing". Respect is not a right, it is earned, he's earned mine.
        lostmsu 1y ago
        Really you shouldn't need to know who is saying what. Words have merit, people can only have trust.
        moralestapia 1y ago
        That's true!
        catgary 1y ago
        I don’t know what you’re talking about here. You can run your mouth as much as you like…you just become a laughingstock at a certain point. Nobody is calling for geohot to be silenced.
- runlevel1 1y ago
  > but he has earned the cred and walks the walk. One of the lessons I wish I'd learned earlier is that indulging bombastic behavior neither benefits them nor you. Strong opinions, weakly held are good. Well-reasoned opinions to the contrary are even encouraged. Provided, of course, that they're smart enough to know when to persist and when to disagree and commit. If you just indulge it, they end up with the engineering equivalent of Nobelitis. And if they're on your team, you end up with more burden than asset no matter how brilliant they are.
imtringued 1y ago
I think he is right about AMD but completely misses the mark when it comes to tenstorrent. He is ranting about exponential linear unit (elu), which hardly seems to be something that could possibly hold an AI company back. If the hardware is running and training models reliably, then it's just a matter of pricing to stay competitive. Poor optimization cuts your margins, but the incentives are aligned. With AMD the experience is so poor that you have to save the company from itself if you want to make progress.
- modeless 1y ago
  He's not ranting about ELU. He's using ELU as an example of something that shouldn't be in the lower abstraction layers.
- latchkey 1y ago
  People refuse to believe it, but the AMD experience is getting better every day by leaps and bounds. Over the last few months, there is a brand new focus on improving the software. There is still a long way to go, but the company is absolutely trying to save itself.
  - georgehotz 1y ago
    AMD has legitimately been making great progress. They still have a long way to go, and I appreciate SemiAnalysis taking up the mantle of calling them out, but I ran: pip3 install torch torchvision torchaudio --index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/rocm6.3 https://download.pytorch.org/whl/rocm6.3 today on stream and it just worked. No external ROCm install, and just the amdgpu driver that's in Arch. We also have our own complete driver/runtime now in tinygrad; it's so much nicer to build on a foundation when you can blame yourself for the bugs.
    - latchkey 1y ago
      Regarding SA, I’m all for holding AMD accountable, but let’s at least get the facts right, and maybe don’t come at it with a history of cheerleading for Nvidia. Maybe SA might set their sights on you next?
arresin 1y ago
Must we snark on every single ducking post? It makes reading these comments a bit exhausting.

I thought George was going to save AMD. Now he's saving tenstorrent? Busy guy!

add-sub-mul-div 1y ago

Don't forget he was also going to save Twitter but noped out after a few weeks.

henning 1y ago
Maintaining and improving existing software sure is boring and often thankless compared to starting flashy new projects where you get to make and understand all the major decisions up front.
- Aurornis 1y ago
  > Maintaining and improving existing software sure is boring and often thankless There was a big public episode where he appealed to Elon Musk for a job at Twitter, was given an “internship”, tried soliciting public submissions for the code he was tasked with, left a lot of people shocked that he was struggled with basic FE work, and then resigned 4 weeks in: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34074344 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34074344

moralestapia 1y ago

geohot has a loud mouth ... but he has earned the cred and walks the walk. I wish there was a thousand more geohots than all the mediocre middle-managers at AMD or tenstorrent; or people who have never done anything beyond posting snarky comments in online forums.

Aurornis 1y ago
> geohot has a loud mouth ... but he has earned the cred Sadly, I think geohot is an example of someone who earned some cred for impressive accomplishments in the past and then tried to cash in that cred over and over again in unrelated future domains. His brief and very public flame out at Twitter after mysteriously abandoning another project and the bold claims about his AMD work that never really translated to anything have really detracted from whatever past “cred” he built up. I really hope he can find a new niche and succeed, but until then it might be time to lie low on social media and avoid throwing more mud.
- moralestapia 1y ago
  >geohot has a loud mouth ... but he has earned the cred >I think geohot is an example of someone who earned some cred for impressive accomplishments in the past [...] Huh? Yeah, that's what I wrote.
  - Aurornis 1y ago
    > Huh? Yeah, that's what I wrote. You cut out the part of my post where I made my point. Earning “cred” for past accomplishments doesn’t give someone a free pass forever to be a loud mouth.
    - moralestapia 1y ago
      Then I don't get the point you're trying to make. >Earning “cred” for past accomplishments doesn’t give someone a free pass forever to be a loud mouth. What the ... ? Sorry, but you don't have to earn that. I suggest you familiarize yourself with human rights, particularly if you won the lottery and were born in a country like the US; it is very clearly written, in unambiguous terms, the rights their citizens enjoy. And still, I'd rather listen to geohot rambling about whatever he wants to say, than some randos on the internet who have accomplished nothing but "arguing". Respect is not a right, it is earned, he's earned mine.
      - lostmsu 1y ago
        Really you shouldn't need to know who is saying what. Words have merit, people can only have trust.
        moralestapia 1y ago
        That's true!
      - catgary 1y ago
        I don’t know what you’re talking about here. You can run your mouth as much as you like…you just become a laughingstock at a certain point. Nobody is calling for geohot to be silenced.
runlevel1 1y ago
> but he has earned the cred and walks the walk. One of the lessons I wish I'd learned earlier is that indulging bombastic behavior neither benefits them nor you. Strong opinions, weakly held are good. Well-reasoned opinions to the contrary are even encouraged. Provided, of course, that they're smart enough to know when to persist and when to disagree and commit. If you just indulge it, they end up with the engineering equivalent of Nobelitis. And if they're on your team, you end up with more burden than asset no matter how brilliant they are.

imtringued 1y ago

I think he is right about AMD but completely misses the mark when it comes to tenstorrent. He is ranting about exponential linear unit (elu), which hardly seems to be something that could possibly hold an AI company back. If the hardware is running and training models reliably, then it's just a matter of pricing to stay competitive. Poor optimization cuts your margins, but the incentives are aligned. With AMD the experience is so poor that you have to save the company from itself if you want to make progress.

modeless 1y ago
He's not ranting about ELU. He's using ELU as an example of something that shouldn't be in the lower abstraction layers.
latchkey 1y ago
People refuse to believe it, but the AMD experience is getting better every day by leaps and bounds. Over the last few months, there is a brand new focus on improving the software. There is still a long way to go, but the company is absolutely trying to save itself.
- georgehotz 1y ago
  AMD has legitimately been making great progress. They still have a long way to go, and I appreciate SemiAnalysis taking up the mantle of calling them out, but I ran: pip3 install torch torchvision torchaudio --index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/rocm6.3 https://download.pytorch.org/whl/rocm6.3 today on stream and it just worked. No external ROCm install, and just the amdgpu driver that's in Arch. We also have our own complete driver/runtime now in tinygrad; it's so much nicer to build on a foundation when you can blame yourself for the bugs.
  - latchkey 1y ago
    Regarding SA, I’m all for holding AMD accountable, but let’s at least get the facts right, and maybe don’t come at it with a history of cheerleading for Nvidia. Maybe SA might set their sights on you next?

arresin 1y ago

Must we snark on every single ducking post? It makes reading these comments a bit exhausting.