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Ask HN: What startups are working on hard, technically challenging problems?

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Re: Ask HN: What startups are working on hard, technically challenging problems?

#101

Post by lmeyerov »

bjwbell wrote: post #38
higherpurpose wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nvidia has done great work with CUDA, but I wonder if AMD/ARM's HSA will make the work of the people using CUDA now much easier in the future - compute with a high-level language that you already know. That's got to be some kind of paradigm change there. I just hope they end up supporting Rust, too.

Compute on the GPU is unlikely to be unified in a meaningful way with the CPU in the near future. The GPU is a massive SIMD machine in contrast to the CPU. Even if you use the same language for both, the style of code & algorithms are very different.

Check out the AMD APU. We've had good experiences with recent Intel integrated as well due to embedded RAM. You are right though in that we write our code with data parallel and sometimes manycore SIMT in mind.

Re: Ask HN: What startups are working on hard, technically challenging problems?

#102

Post by lmeyerov »

bjwbell wrote: post #38
higherpurpose wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nvidia has done great work with CUDA, but I wonder if AMD/ARM's HSA will make the work of the people using CUDA now much easier in the future - compute with a high-level language that you already know. That's got to be some kind of paradigm change there. I just hope they end up supporting Rust, too.

Compute on the GPU is unlikely to be unified in a meaningful way with the CPU in the near future. The GPU is a massive SIMD machine in contrast to the CPU. Even if you use the same language for both, the style of code & algorithms are very different.

Check out the AMD APU. We've had good experiences with recent Intel integrated as well due to embedded RAM. You are right though in that we write our code with data parallel and sometimes manycore SIMT in mind.

Re: Ask HN: What startups are working on hard, technically challenging problems?

#105

Post by lmeyerov »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #83
lmeyerov wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See my post above about what we're trying yo achieve with Graphistry. Unlocking 20 years of infoviz research by letting anyone run on 1000 real-time GPUs helps move some of the most important sectors forward, eg, biology, security, and finance.

What do you mean, real-time GPUs? And: what interconnect are you running on? How does your scaling look? Is this just for embarrasingly parallel stuff? Just curious; I'm running multi-GPUs myself for molecular dynamics.

Imagine moving a slider in your viz to change a filter, physics setting, etc. and have cluster start to immediately feed back new results.

We started on building fast-start multitenant access to single GPUs and approaching peak on those (full-GPU barnes hut, 10X over Keshav's work). We're now focusing on distributing, and as we are more interested on running on many GPUs for scale out, focusing on communication avoiding. This makes a path to giving companies time on 1000 GPUs (think Pixar-levels of compute) rather than shipping small 8 GPU boxes with infiniband. Via elasticity and time sharing, the analyst hour pricing is unprecedented.

The titan guys run on 20,000 GPUs for similar astronomy codes, so doable. We're making it in more accessible, big-team, and analyst-focused ways. E.g., load, interactively analyze with smart defaults & streamlined common paths, export/report, and share.

Re: Ask HN: What startups are working on hard, technically challenging problems?

#106

Post by ZenoArrow »

hoodoof wrote: post #40
damnusername wrote: post #6

I submitted this to slashdot a few weeks ago, but it got declined: "For some time now, I have been following the "startup scene" and frankly, I am left with a sense of dismay. How many of the startups actually do anything of any real value to mankind? It seems to me that the startup ideas just keep getting more ridiculous and stupid by the day and I think I would go as far as to call the whole thing deeply broken. I…

Where has this concept of "world changing is important, and a business must be of real value to mankind" come from in recent years? Who gives a shit how incredibly, ultimately, world changingly seriously important the work is of a business? Since when did this become some sort of measure of the worth of a tech company? Sounds like misguided hippy shit to me. Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs didn't set out to…

> Who gives a shit how incredibly, ultimately, world changingly seriously important the work is of a business?

I don't give a shit about how world-changing a business is, but I do care that companies should be driven for more than just making money. Most companies aim to be profitable, but if that's the only goal then they're primed for corruption (even on a minor scale). Who cares so long as profits keep growing, dog eat dog, right?

There's a difference between 'Can I do something?' and 'Should I do something?', I see no harm in wanting companies that consider the latter.

Re: Ask HN: What startups are working on hard, technically challenging problems?

#107

Post by lmeyerov »

mkramlich wrote: post #100
huhtenberg wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we cracked a botnet a couple days ago using it Do elaborate...

I love how due to the nature of the Internet that huhtenberg may be the owner of that botnet. ;-) (note: not saying he is, obviously. just making a point we should all be aware or when communicating with strangers online.)

If he takes it down without authorities forcing him to, great!

Re: Ask HN: What startups are working on hard, technically challenging problems?

#108

Post by pelhage »

damnusername wrote: post #6

I submitted this to slashdot a few weeks ago, but it got declined: "For some time now, I have been following the "startup scene" and frankly, I am left with a sense of dismay. How many of the startups actually do anything of any real value to mankind? It seems to me that the startup ideas just keep getting more ridiculous and stupid by the day and I think I would go as far as to call the whole thing deeply broken. I…

Value is ultimately a subjective term. Your perception of value is different than my perception of value, which is different than millions if not billions of other people's perception of value.

There are countless startups which were perceived as having little value only to be praised and hugely successful years later, yet nothing changed– only people's perceptions.

I guess my point is that before asking a question like that, we would have to define what you constitute as "doing anything of real value to mankind". And who's to say your definition of value is the right one anyway?

Re: Ask HN: What startups are working on hard, technically challenging problems?

#109

Post by jbdowney »

At Airware, we are doing hardware, embedded systems, flight controls, desktop development, and web services. We deal with every type of data that could be captured by a 5-50lb drone aircraft and processed or analyzed: images, video, logs, streaming telemetry, etc. Problem spaces include autonomy, machine vision, and distributed computing (both on the vehicle and in the cloud).

Yes, we are hiring: http://www.airware.com/careers

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