3 ms·

Interesting. Is the speedup from specializing for the shape of Llama 3.1 or are they (contra my mental model) actually winning on burning in the weights?

akiselev 3mo ago
The weights are in SRAM, so the LLM architecture is burned in but the weights can be updated.
- hedgehog 3mo ago
  No the weights are in the metal layers, they cannot be updated.
  - jfim 3mo ago
    The base weights can't be updated but from what I recall it allows adding a low rank adapter to customize the model a little bit.
    - hedgehog 3mo ago
      Yes that's what I've read. As far as I know the approach should transfer well to hybrid model architectures like modern Qwen and sizes like 27B by using multiple chips. LoRA-steered Qwen 27B at 10K+ tokens per second would be transformative for some workflows.
- Tuna-Fish 3mo ago
  Taalas only uses SRAM for the KV cache and the activations, the weights are in mask rom in the metal layers. If they designed this right, it means that once they have a model, so long as they keep the hyperparameters fixed they can change the weights much faster than it takes to spin up a completely new chip, essentially at a cost of doing a minor revision.
  - quotemstr 3mo ago
    Is the mask ROM really going to be worth it over Carmack's high-bandwidth-flash concept? I mean, sure, I could be convinced I guess, but it's not obvious.
    - Tuna-Fish 3mo ago
      Yes. Not because rom is better than flash, but because the critical part is distributing the memory with the compute. Mask ROM is just the densest way of embedding memory with logic. Instead of having a large pool of memory connected to the separate execution units with a bus, each execution unit locally has the rom that it uses. Data movement is >90% of energy use in modern ai accelerators, removing it as far as practical is how they get performance and silicon and energy efficiency.
  - tacitusarc 3mo ago
    But attention/KV cache is the heavy bit in long context lengths which is what everyone needs…

akiselev 3mo ago

The weights are in SRAM, so the LLM architecture is burned in but the weights can be updated.

hedgehog 3mo ago
No the weights are in the metal layers, they cannot be updated.
- jfim 3mo ago
  The base weights can't be updated but from what I recall it allows adding a low rank adapter to customize the model a little bit.
  - hedgehog 3mo ago
    Yes that's what I've read. As far as I know the approach should transfer well to hybrid model architectures like modern Qwen and sizes like 27B by using multiple chips. LoRA-steered Qwen 27B at 10K+ tokens per second would be transformative for some workflows.
Tuna-Fish 3mo ago
Taalas only uses SRAM for the KV cache and the activations, the weights are in mask rom in the metal layers. If they designed this right, it means that once they have a model, so long as they keep the hyperparameters fixed they can change the weights much faster than it takes to spin up a completely new chip, essentially at a cost of doing a minor revision.
- quotemstr 3mo ago
  Is the mask ROM really going to be worth it over Carmack's high-bandwidth-flash concept? I mean, sure, I could be convinced I guess, but it's not obvious.
  - Tuna-Fish 3mo ago
    Yes. Not because rom is better than flash, but because the critical part is distributing the memory with the compute. Mask ROM is just the densest way of embedding memory with logic. Instead of having a large pool of memory connected to the separate execution units with a bus, each execution unit locally has the rom that it uses. Data movement is >90% of energy use in modern ai accelerators, removing it as far as practical is how they get performance and silicon and energy efficiency.
- tacitusarc 3mo ago
  But attention/KV cache is the heavy bit in long context lengths which is what everyone needs…