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I’m surprised Anthropic wanted to partner with Broadcom when they have such a negative reputation with antics such as their VMWare acquisition.
by cebert 6mo ago
I’m surprised Anthropic wanted to partner with Broadcom when they have such a negative reputation with antics such as their VMWare acquisition.
- Eufrat 6mo agoI think it’s also important to add the context that Broadcom’s CEO, Hock Tan, went on CNBC in October and had a vacuous conversation with Jim Cramer about their OpenAI “deal” at the time [0]. Nothing of substance was said, it was just endless loops about the opportunity of AI. It is now 6 months later and there has been nary a peep from Broadcom about any updates. I think Anthropic is a more grounded company than OpenAI because Sam Altman is insane, but it is still playing the same game. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pU2HhJ3jCts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pU2HhJ3jCts
- jeffbee 6mo agoBroadcom makes the TPU. If you want TPUs, you are working with Broadcom whether you want to or not.
- thundergolfer 6mo agoBroadcom builds the TPU chip. Google designs it. You can’t avoid partnering with Broadcom if you want TPUs in significant volume .
- alephnerd 6mo agoBroadcom designs it as well [0], though GCP also works on design as well. [0] - https://www.broadcom.com/products/custom-silicon https://www.broadcom.com/products/custom-silicon
- Jyaif 6mo agoTSMC builds the TPU chip. Broadcom does the rest of the electronics (motherboard, networking, etc...)
- nsteel 6mo agoAnd and Broadcom designs a huge part of the chip. They take Google's (mostly) logical design and providing everything TSMC need to physically make the chip (including imports g IP such as serdes, PLLs, and test).
- ggm 6mo agoThe VMware s/w rental market has no relevance to this deal, any more than the IBM role in data processing in germany in the 1930s had any relevance to their business in Israel in the 60s, or Oracle's failure in the DC market impacts licencing of the database product. It's just not material. Broadcom make devices they need, and Broadcom want to sell those devices and exclude another VLSI company from selling, so the two have an interest in doing business. That's all there is to it. About the most you could say is that the lawyers drafting whatever agreement they sign to, will reflect on the contract in regard to future changes of pricing and supply, in the light of what Broadcom did with VMWare licencing costs.