Wasn’t this what Mythic was after?
IBM analog AI chip could give the Nvidia H100 a run for its money
61–70 of 71 posts
Re: IBM analog AI chip could give the Nvidia H100 a run for its money
#62I 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.
If you manage to do inference in analog you’re orders of magnitude more efficient. People will adapt to crappy frameworks and awkward drivers.
Re: IBM analog AI chip could give the Nvidia H100 a run for its money
#63I thinks this type of paradigm shift is what will be needed for the next level of performance for AI. But it also seems like for that to be competitive with current methods, they need to reduce the size by a factor of 2-3 and also make bigger chips. I just feel like IBM has a track record recently of doing great research but not actually manufacturing anything. Kind of like Google.
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.
As far as I'm concerned that's a bug not a feature for them.
Re: IBM analog AI chip could give the Nvidia H100 a run for its money
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
How often do they deliver viable new commercial products? Or are they for “modern chip design” what Google is for “modern AI models”?
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Re: IBM analog AI chip could give the Nvidia H100 a run for its money
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I feel like the irony here is that for all the fences most companies put around their mainframes... at the end of the day and inside the fence it's usually 1-2 people running everything who still know how to hack JCL et al.
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Re: IBM analog AI chip could give the Nvidia H100 a run for its money
#66Earlier 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.
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Re: IBM analog AI chip could give the Nvidia H100 a run for its money
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
How often do they deliver viable new commercial products? Or are they for “modern chip design” what Google is for “modern AI models”?
Here is an example which shows how they participate in the cutting edge
essentially they develop and license technologies around the chip making process
Re: IBM analog AI chip could give the Nvidia H100 a run for its money
#68I 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.
I am sorry for sounding harsh but this and other comments in the thread sound like IBM paid promotion. The headline is claiming to head up against Nvidia. First show me something that can compete with AMD which is miles behind Nvidia. Otherwise it's just click bait.
Re: IBM analog AI chip could give the Nvidia H100 a run for its money
#69The actual nature paper mentioned in the article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06337-5 IBM blog post: https://research.ibm.com/blog/analog-ai-chip-low-power Also I'd like to mention that those chips are for inference only. You still need GPUs for training.
Compact, low-power chips to run ML inference on stuff like vision, image generation, high-quality voice synthesis, maybe even translation and LLM stuff, would be very welcome.
Imagine a good inference engine right in a phone.
Re: IBM analog AI chip could give the Nvidia H100 a run for its money
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, IBM reached a peak in the past from which a gradual fall still leaves them raking in money from largely legacy enterprise clients for a very long time. That doesn't make them competitive in new markets, though.
Unfortunately I won't be around to check on it, lets see in 100 years who would still be around.
Your repeated discount of "it's shrinking and has been shrinking" with "we just don't know" is like saying that because you won't be around in 100 years you also can't make claims about whether the sun will come up.
I won't be around in 100 years either but I am sure IBM won't survive for the same reason I'm sure the sun will rise: all rigorous analysis today indicates it.