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Google’s training and running all their stuff on ASICs, seems to be working out well.
by surfmike 7mo ago
Google’s training and running all their stuff on ASICs, seems to be working out well.
- cubefox 7mo agoTPUs are not ASICs if they can execute arbitrary models.
- AdamN 7mo agoForgive my ignorance but wouldn't a TPU be a kind of ASIC where the application is model inference? The TPU Wikipedia article also says it's an ASIC - we should update it if it's wrong.
- cubefox 7mo agoIn the limit, even a CPU could be called an ASIC because certain algorithmic operations (ALU etc) are implemented in hardware. CPU/ASIC are really poles of a gradient, with a CPU implementing very little in hardware and most in software, while an ASIC has very little software and lots of hardware. A TPU is presumably in between. I would argue however that it is closer to a GPU than to a full-blown ASIC, because the weights are stored in memory only, making them software.
- r_lee 7mo agothey're TPUs, same thing as GPUs but specifically for tensor ops.