“People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.” - Alan Kay
The first two custom silicon chips designed by Microsoft for its cloud
131–140 of 282 posts
Re: The first two custom silicon chips designed by Microsoft for its cloud
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Amazon announced theirs last year Inferentia (inf1) was GA'ed in December 2019 so it's actually almost 4 years old now. The trainium (trn1) chips and the Inferentia 2 (inf2) refresh is indeed 1 year old though.
Yikes those names are horrible.
They're searchable and self-explanatory so they're not bad.
Re: The first two custom silicon chips designed by Microsoft for its cloud
#133I am a little confused on all this. I thought conventional wisdom was that creating "super good/ top performant " computer processors was hard, and unless you could produce them at scale prohibitable expensive. Is this done as a bridge until/if Nvidia is able to deliver their processors fast enough? I would think that competitors to Nvidea would have serious competitors on the market already if competing can be done…
Presumably Microsoft won't be making the chips, I guess they will also be made by TSMC.
Re: The first two custom silicon chips designed by Microsoft for its cloud
#134AI, or creation of AI, will very soon leave the hands of common folks at this rate. The cost will soon unattainable.
This is likely to be cyclical though. Fast cars[1], large amounts of processing power[2], access to cryptographic algorithms, are all things that started out expensive to be on the cutting edge, some still are expensive on the cutting edge, but then became more affordable for the consumer over time. AI has already had explorations on training models with limited resources. It's feasible, just has tradeoffs that will hopefully get better over time.
[1] A 1970 Corvette 427 has a 0 - 60 mph of 5.3 seconds (src: https://www.caranddriver.com/features/g15379023/the-chevrole...) and cost around $44k inflation adjusted dollars. You can buy a 2008 Nissasn 350Z Enthusiast that will do it in 5.2 (src: https://www.zeroto60times.com/vehicle-make/nissan-0-60-mph-t...?) for around $13k today.
[2] I'm too lazy to calculate relative cost / cycle in old warehouse computers vs phones but it's gotten _better_.
Re: The first two custom silicon chips designed by Microsoft for its cloud
#135I am a little confused on all this. I thought conventional wisdom was that creating "super good/ top performant " computer processors was hard, and unless you could produce them at scale prohibitable expensive. Is this done as a bridge until/if Nvidia is able to deliver their processors fast enough? I would think that competitors to Nvidea would have serious competitors on the market already if competing can be done…
Why would Microsoft not produce them at scale? With Azure and internal use cases I'm sure they're at a good scale.
Re: The first two custom silicon chips designed by Microsoft for its cloud
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why? Inferentia => inference, trainium => training. Funny, that's precisely why I think the names are bad. It's like if Google had chosen "Search-ola" as their name. Way too on the nose and/or lazy. Having said that, I don't really care all that much and I imagine that may have been the spirit of those who chose the names.
heh, as someone who has to deal with this nonsense all day https://aws.amazon.com/products/ > I would for sure welcome some straightforward naming. $(echo "AWS Fargate" | sed s/Fargate/ServerlessContainerium/)
My previous role was a lot of AWS, and I became convinced that the value of an AWS cert was mostly learning how to map all of the product names to their actual functions.
Re: The first two custom silicon chips designed by Microsoft for its cloud
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
They'll sound better after we hear Microsoft's names.
I'm still so bitter about this nonsense https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/business/identity-a... > Azure Active Directory is now Microsoft Entra ID ok, geez, thanks
I don’t really know what an active directory is, but I assume that the default type of directory is a passive one, in that it just holds files or subdirectory (it doesn’t act). An active directory sounds like a directory that is going to play tricks on me.
Entra ID sounds like a type of ID.
I’m not sure how something could legitimately have each of these names. I assume the functionality changed pretty dramatically over the lifespan of the product?
Re: The first two custom silicon chips designed by Microsoft for its cloud
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm still so bitter about this nonsense https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/business/identity-a... > Azure Active Directory is now Microsoft Entra ID ok, geez, thanks
I don’t really know what an active directory is, but I assume that the default type of directory is a passive one, in that it just holds files or subdirectory (it doesn’t act). An active directory sounds like a directory that is going to play tricks on me. Entra ID sounds like a type of ID. I’m not sure how something could legitimately have each of these names. I assume the functionality changed pretty dramatically o…
Active Directory is Microsoft's database targeted mostly for user login and associated data.
Re: The first two custom silicon chips designed by Microsoft for its cloud
#139Note that Microsoft has been using "custom chips" for years; they've just been on FPGAs not ASICs. They've developed IP to accelerate a whole bunch of processes, so it's not like they've suddenly come around to a magic sauce that Amazon and Google have been doing this whole time. It would surprise me if over half of the new chip is just based on RTL from their FPGA design.
The only thing that's changed is that they're scaling like crazy now and can justify overhead that comes with designing ASICs versus using off the shelf parts.
Re: The first two custom silicon chips designed by Microsoft for its cloud
#140It was only a matter of time. Google announced theirs years ago, Amazon announced theirs last year. Right now NVIDIA has the lead because they have the better software, but they can't make the chips fast enough. Will be interesting to see if their better software continues to keep them in the lead or if people are more interested in getting the capacity in any form.
If they “can’t make the chips fast enough” being TSMC’s second highest volume customer behind Apple and probably second in priority, what chance does Microsoft have getting enough of TSMCs capacity?
> what chance does Microsoft have getting enough of TSMCs capacity?
Looking at their balance sheet: plenty.
TSMC is all about pay to play. Apple is first in line because they’re willing to pay to be first in line. I have no doubt Microsoft can justify spending the money they save not buying nvidia into getting some priority access from TSMC.
Also keep in mind Apple is now on 3nm so there’s likely spare 5nm.