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IBM analog AI chip could give the Nvidia H100 a run for its money

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Re: IBM analog AI chip could give the Nvidia H100 a run for its money

#41

Post by refulgentis »

dleeftink wrote: post #30
PeterisP wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're not really trying to model the organic brain; while some structures are somewhat inspired by some structures in the brain, the current learning structures are fundamentally quite different from biological brains. While there is a bunch of research for modeling organic brains, IMHO it is primarily driven by neuroscience trying to understand how humans work, and not directly applicable to making computation more…

But wouldn't some computations be more efficient it they could run on brain-like synapses/clusters or hardware analogs thereof? Pattern recognition, multi-modal perception and such.

Maybe? This presupposes we know how the brain works (we don't).

Then you can kind of walk it to "but what if it kinda worked like [my understanding of how the brain works], would it be more efficient?", but it's not really clear what conversation we're having at that point.

Re: IBM analog AI chip could give the Nvidia H100 a run for its money

#43

Post by bawolff »

brudgers wrote: post #39
whinvik wrote: post #34

I have become pretty wary of all headlines touting how a new chip is going to dethrone Nvidia. The problem with every hardware company is that they ridiculously underestimate software. I think the only way a company is going to start competing is by being software first. Make the software so good and easy to use that every one wants to use it. Only then is the hardware going to compete.

IBM has a long history of competent software development, hardware development, and product development. This isn't a kickstarter. It's backed by published research as was the case for relational databases.

Emphasis on "long", as in long time ago, as in before many of us were born.

Modern IBM isn't what it once was.

Edit: to clarify i mean on the software side. I don't know enough about the hardware side to comment.

Re: IBM analog AI chip could give the Nvidia H100 a run for its money

#44

Post by wil421 »

ginko wrote: post #27
wil421 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would bet a large portion of software engineers work in Big Companies. FANG employees comment regularly here and they work for the biggest companies in Tech.

Even in a FANG you can't just walk to your manager and tell them to get a mainframe so you can play around with z/OS.

No one will let you play with a mainframe. I’ve worked for finical services companies and toured a data center with large IBM mainframes I wasn’t allowed to get close to much less touch the software.

I’m sure if I wanted to move to the team it would’ve been possible to play with z/OS.

Re: IBM analog AI chip could give the Nvidia H100 a run for its money

#45

Post by dontwearitout »

bob1029 wrote: post #16
dontwearitout wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But unless it can directly or indirectly support current transformer architectures (with their huge parameter counts), it's going to critically struggle with adoption.

Why can't we develop different architectures?

We absolutely can and will in time, but for better or worse LLMs and large transformer models are highly effective and are entrenching themselves. Any competing hardware architecture that cannot port LLMs will have to do a lot of bootstrapping, and will have to have some extremely compelling reasons for people to choose it.

Cutting energy costs by an order of magnitude could be enough motivation, but you'll still need to demonstrate competitive model performance.

Re: IBM analog AI chip could give the Nvidia H100 a run for its money

#46

Post by verall »

fidotron wrote: post #37
verall wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have an example or can expand on what you mean about the last point? Isn't sharpness mostly limited by the lens systems in modern cameras rather than the Bayer sensor resolution?

The use of a bayer filter means that the actual edges for different colour areas are created in software processing afterwards. This causes everything to be slightly misaligned and fuzzy in a way the foveon was not, and no amount of reconstructive processing is going to help you. Of course today the actual resolution of more conventional sensors dramatically exceeds the best foveons to the point where this advantage…

I work on camera systems, I know how a Bayer filter works, it doesn't make everything misaligned and fuzzy. Edge directed upscaling works great. I'm curious how the foveon looked different or if you had an example.

If you only mean for old digital cameras, then sure. But you're not seeing bayer artifacts in any modern camera. Rolling shutter artifacts, on the other hand..

Re: IBM analog AI chip could give the Nvidia H100 a run for its money

#47

Post by andrewpolidori »

bawolff wrote: post #43
brudgers wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IBM has a long history of competent software development, hardware development, and product development. This isn't a kickstarter. It's backed by published research as was the case for relational databases.

Emphasis on "long", as in long time ago, as in before many of us were born. Modern IBM isn't what it once was. Edit: to clarify i mean on the software side. I don't know enough about the hardware side to comment.

Modern IBM is at the forefront of modern chip design. They regularly publish some of the most advanced research in the world, and are part of the industry consortium driving those changes.

Re: IBM analog AI chip could give the Nvidia H100 a run for its money

#48

Post by [deleted] »

magic_man wrote: post #8
pjmlp wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually IBM doesn't sell to the kind of HN crowd, rather people happy with Aix, IBM i and z/OS, DB2, cloud for mainframes, own JVM implementations, Java EE servers, offshoring services,... Some of the research does end in such products, that are outside HN radar, because IBM isn't cool, yet many HN startups won't achieve a legacy like it and still be pumping money like IBM, even for boring business.

IBM revenue has been shrinking over the last 10 years. They aren't selling well.

[deleted]

Re: IBM analog AI chip could give the Nvidia H100 a run for its money

#49

Post by [deleted] »

brudgers wrote: post #39
whinvik wrote: post #34

I have become pretty wary of all headlines touting how a new chip is going to dethrone Nvidia. The problem with every hardware company is that they ridiculously underestimate software. I think the only way a company is going to start competing is by being software first. Make the software so good and easy to use that every one wants to use it. Only then is the hardware going to compete.

IBM has a long history of competent software development, hardware development, and product development. This isn't a kickstarter. It's backed by published research as was the case for relational databases.

[deleted]

Re: IBM analog AI chip could give the Nvidia H100 a run for its money

#50

Post by dharma1 »

verall wrote: post #46
fidotron wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The use of a bayer filter means that the actual edges for different colour areas are created in software processing afterwards. This causes everything to be slightly misaligned and fuzzy in a way the foveon was not, and no amount of reconstructive processing is going to help you. Of course today the actual resolution of more conventional sensors dramatically exceeds the best foveons to the point where this advantage…

I work on camera systems, I know how a Bayer filter works, it doesn't make everything misaligned and fuzzy. Edge directed upscaling works great. I'm curious how the foveon looked different or if you had an example. If you only mean for old digital cameras, then sure. But you're not seeing bayer artifacts in any modern camera. Rolling shutter artifacts, on the other hand..

I can send you some example images of Foveon Merrill sensor if you want. The cameras are slow by today’s standards, but the images are delightfully detailed. Sigma is still working on a new full frame Foveon camera, I am waiting patiently.

https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/news/sigma-will-never-giv...

Back to topic, I believe this type of tech (analog/physical computing, processing and memory in the same unit) will become very significant on a 10+ year horizon. Hinton has been hinting at some collaborations recently

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