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The rise of AI is creating new variety in the chip market, and trouble for Intel

economist.com

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Re: The rise of AI is creating new variety in the chip market, and trouble for Intel

#11

Post by planteen »

petra wrote: post #7
friedman23 wrote: post #5

> Instead of making ASICS or FPGAs, Intel focused in recent years on making its CPU processors ever more powerful If only, intel has been abusing their market position and pushing out "upgrades" that barely have a performance improvement over the previous generation. AI is not going to eat intel's lunch, all those computers still require cpus. AMD on the other hand may eat intel's lunch by releasing powerful multicor…

ASIC/FPGA or even GPU's aren't the future of neural computing. The future is analog(orders of magnitude perf/watt and perf/$). That require older fabs, optimized for analog, and having good embedded flash, which TSMC has and Intel mostly hasn't got. And that same future applies not only for neural computing, but for a field called approximate-computing, i.e. computing where results aren't accurate.Some/many signal an…

What analog function exactly are we talking about here? I'm genuinely curious. There's certainly a fading art for lots of analog computing techniques, like taking the arctan or log of an input signal. But how is that useful for neural computing?

I worked for a while as the software/FPGA guy on a high-power RF amplifier for MRI machines. I worked with some very talented RF engineers. There were obviously some parts of the chain that were analog (like the preamps and high power amp itself). But lots of it was being replaced with digital (DSP techniques) in the next generation and the RF engineers loved it. Filters no longer needed a 15 minute tuning session by a technician with a network analyzer. A Hilbert transform is far easier and better in digital than analog. Design changes could be experimented with in a day instead of PCB spins that took weeks.

Re: The rise of AI is creating new variety in the chip market, and trouble for Intel

#13

Post by coldtea »

friedman23 wrote: post #5

> Instead of making ASICS or FPGAs, Intel focused in recent years on making its CPU processors ever more powerful If only, intel has been abusing their market position and pushing out "upgrades" that barely have a performance improvement over the previous generation. AI is not going to eat intel's lunch, all those computers still require cpus. AMD on the other hand may eat intel's lunch by releasing powerful multicor…

>If only, intel has been abusing their market position and pushing out "upgrades" that barely have a performance improvement over the previous generation.

And why is that because of "abusing their market position", as opposed to plainly and clearly being more difficult to get faster processors at 14 nm and lower resolutions (and with the low power requirements of today)?

Besides, the trend the article points to is a BS fad as I see it (and I've seen 5-6 of those play out in the last 30 years). ASICS and FPGAs wont even come close to bringing in as much cash as general purpose CPUs do for Intel.

Re: The rise of AI is creating new variety in the chip market, and trouble for Intel

#14

Post by Zenst »

It is more a case most cpu intensive demands being addressed by dedicated chips, as we always have had. Many area's of information technology move from general cpu's towards dedicated silicon. Even CPU's adapt and add instructions and with that small area's of silicon space for some dedicated demands (think MMX, AVX, AES,...).

This is no change at all in what we already have. It is when we finally dedicate all tasks down to dedicated silicon that the glue of a CPU processing wise will diminish.

But then CPU's of today are constantly adapting and I'd say the C in CPU is better defined as Centralised rather than Central.

For me, I'm looking forward to a AI grammar and contextual spelling checker that will make all grama nazi's obsolete.

So my perspective upon this for intel is that I foresee no trouble for Intel, who already adapt to change and are not to be dismissed any time soon, just yet.

Re: The rise of AI is creating new variety in the chip market, and trouble for Intel

#15

Post by jdjebc82747 »

Zenst wrote: post #14

It is more a case most cpu intensive demands being addressed by dedicated chips, as we always have had. Many area's of information technology move from general cpu's towards dedicated silicon. Even CPU's adapt and add instructions and with that small area's of silicon space for some dedicated demands (think MMX, AVX, AES,...). This is no change at all in what we already have. It is when we finally dedicate all tasks…

>For me, I'm looking forward to a AI grammar and contextual spelling checker that will make all grama nazi's obsolete.

I'm not. I feel like human language is meant to be fluid and to evolve as we do. This would potentially lead to more of a global monoculture than we are already starting to get.

Re: The rise of AI is creating new variety in the chip market, and trouble for Intel

#16

Post by Zenst »

coldtea wrote: post #13
friedman23 wrote: post #5

> Instead of making ASICS or FPGAs, Intel focused in recent years on making its CPU processors ever more powerful If only, intel has been abusing their market position and pushing out "upgrades" that barely have a performance improvement over the previous generation. AI is not going to eat intel's lunch, all those computers still require cpus. AMD on the other hand may eat intel's lunch by releasing powerful multicor…

> If only, intel has been abusing their market position and pushing out "upgrades" that barely have a performance improvement over the previous generation. And why is that because of "abusing their market position", as opposed to plainly and clearly being more difficult to get faster processors at 14 nm and lower resolutions (and with the low power requirements of today)? Besides, the trend the article points to is a…

The real holdback for FPGA's and indeed any development of software is and how easy is it to translate requirments into reality. That is an area that general CPU's hold over FPGA's, but that will only narrow as it has over time. Just some distance to go. But then Intel recently brought a FPGA company and with that, they can cover any niche area's today as well as any expansion tomorrow in that area.

As for AI, that needs to run upon hardware and whilst Intel is known for hardware they equaly do software and like most large companies. Often easier to let the little chaps do all the work, pick the best before it becomes big and buy them. Which can be cheaper than starting from scratch yourself and reduce the financial risks, whilst still getting in on the returns using smaller companies as research for a much more diverse skills and talents along with increased financial budget combined than any large company could dream of expending. So in some area's it is easier to have in house skills that can keep track of what everybody else is doing in that area and how it is progressing so that you are ready to swoop in and borg that lego block for your collection and reduce your financial risk greatly. More so in area's that are still very much maturing.

Re: The rise of AI is creating new variety in the chip market, and trouble for Intel

#17

Post by abhianet »

> But the GPUs also have new destinations: notably data centres where artificial-intelligence (AI) programmes gobble up the vast quantities of computing power that they generate.

Should not it be "programs"? Or is "programmes" used in some dialect of English I am not aware of?

Re: The rise of AI is creating new variety in the chip market, and trouble for Intel

#18

Post by petra »

krastanov wrote: post #8
petra wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ASIC/FPGA or even GPU's aren't the future of neural computing. The future is analog(orders of magnitude perf/watt and perf/$). That require older fabs, optimized for analog, and having good embedded flash, which TSMC has and Intel mostly hasn't got. And that same future applies not only for neural computing, but for a field called approximate-computing, i.e. computing where results aren't accurate.Some/many signal an…

But analog computers do not permit error correction! Crosstalk of 10% does not affect digital data busses, but ruins analog. ECC memory is trivial with digital but not possible even in theory with analog. This (and programmability) is why we moved from super fast analog to slow digital half a century ago. Given all these constraints I am actually quite excited to hear more of the dissenting view. Can you describe som…

ISOcline.com has one approach, building an analog neuron , and digitizing the inputs and outputs to minimize noise .

As a proof of concept they did a GPS chip , with 66 times higher energy efficiency.

There are others working on analog neural compute , some released good research results .

Re: The rise of AI is creating new variety in the chip market, and trouble for Intel

#19

Post by petra »

planteen wrote: post #11
petra wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ASIC/FPGA or even GPU's aren't the future of neural computing. The future is analog(orders of magnitude perf/watt and perf/$). That require older fabs, optimized for analog, and having good embedded flash, which TSMC has and Intel mostly hasn't got. And that same future applies not only for neural computing, but for a field called approximate-computing, i.e. computing where results aren't accurate.Some/many signal an…

What analog function exactly are we talking about here? I'm genuinely curious. There's certainly a fading art for lots of analog computing techniques, like taking the arctan or log of an input signal. But how is that useful for neural computing? I worked for a while as the software/FPGA guy on a high-power RF amplifier for MRI machines. I worked with some very talented RF engineers. There were obviously some parts of…

See my reply to krastanov.

Re: The rise of AI is creating new variety in the chip market, and trouble for Intel

#20

Post by Zenst »

jdjebc82747 wrote: post #15
Zenst wrote: post #14

It is more a case most cpu intensive demands being addressed by dedicated chips, as we always have had. Many area's of information technology move from general cpu's towards dedicated silicon. Even CPU's adapt and add instructions and with that small area's of silicon space for some dedicated demands (think MMX, AVX, AES,...). This is no change at all in what we already have. It is when we finally dedicate all tasks…

>For me, I'm looking forward to a AI grammar and contextual spelling checker that will make all grama nazi's obsolete. I'm not. I feel like human language is meant to be fluid and to evolve as we do. This would potentially lead to more of a global monoculture than we are already starting to get.

That is a very fair observation and one in which I had not considered. I was somewhat biased in thinking about the aspect that it would make universal translation closer to becoming a reality. So it is somewhat a chaos aspect in languages I suppose that does allow evolution of the language.

With that the whole aspect could voice translation add's another aspect to this and perhaps tackling keyboard inputs upon a keyboard layout that is designed to be the worst possible ever layout is an area due to die off sooner than we think. Though the prospect of forcing generations to endure, even if they do not know about typewriters does bemuse me.

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