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The first two custom silicon chips designed by Microsoft for its cloud

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Re: The first two custom silicon chips designed by Microsoft for its cloud

#181

Post by sanxiyn »

kmod wrote: post #99

I thought an interesting point was the liquid cooling -- unclear how important this is to them, but I'm guessing it means that they designed it with a TDP that requires liquid cooling. This (wanting higher density) is the opposite of the trade-off that I was expecting. In my (limited and out of date) experience, power was the limiting factor before space, and I believe AI racks have very high power draws already. I w…

My understanding is that if you are renting your data center space right now, power still is the limiting factor and you will need to leave some rack space empty to be able to run GPUs.

On the other hand, if you are building your own data center, which is the case for Microsoft, presumably you can arrange high power zone to run GPUs.

Re: The first two custom silicon chips designed by Microsoft for its cloud

#182

Post by vitorgrs »

rapsey wrote: post #23
jedberg wrote: post #3

It 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.

nVidia still has the monopoly on training. Everyone else is just making chips for inference.

The Maia chip Microsoft announced it's also for training.

Re: The first two custom silicon chips designed by Microsoft for its cloud

#183

Post by goodbyesf »

bluedino wrote: post #149
StevePerkins wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It blows my mind that not only are Apple, Nvidia, and all other enormous "chip makers" fabless... but there's ONE single company actually making the majority of all their chips. Why aren't any other companies entering this space? TSMC's growth and profits are immense, it's not like the market couldn't bear more competitors. Also, the current situation is geopolitical insanity. It feels like China and the U.S. are on…

Why doesn't anyone enter? It takes billions and billions of dollars, tons of knowledge and if you get it wrong...even Intel screwed it up, and they are one of the only companies would could even try to do it.

> It takes billions and billions of dollars

Apple and Microsoft are trillion dollar companies ( both nearing $3 trillion market caps ). They can afford it. Heck they have the balance sheet to acquire both tsmc and samsung if either were up for sale.

I thought Apple was moving towards being a full-stack company. Where all the hardware and software is developed in-house. If anyone has the resources, it is apple.

Re: The first two custom silicon chips designed by Microsoft for its cloud

#184

Post by Flameancer »

buildbot wrote: post #159
StevePerkins wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It blows my mind that not only are Apple, Nvidia, and all other enormous "chip makers" fabless... but there's ONE single company actually making the majority of all their chips. Why aren't any other companies entering this space? TSMC's growth and profits are immense, it's not like the market couldn't bear more competitors. Also, the current situation is geopolitical insanity. It feels like China and the U.S. are on…

TSMC is solving some of the hardest physics, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and other kinds of engineering I don't even know about. It's unlikely anyone catches up to them in terms of lithography ability for a long, long time given how well they've executed 45nm and lower nodes.

More like ASML is solving the physics problems and TSMC is the one with the most capital and experience to run their EUV machines. It’s not that other competitors don’t exist, it’s more like they’ve given up or can’t keep up. Global foundations I believe isn’t making the investment past 16nm. Samsungs latest node doesn’t perform as good as TSMC and intel is being intel.

Re: The first two custom silicon chips designed by Microsoft for its cloud

#185

Post by Flameancer »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #150
StevePerkins wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It blows my mind that not only are Apple, Nvidia, and all other enormous "chip makers" fabless... but there's ONE single company actually making the majority of all their chips. Why aren't any other companies entering this space? TSMC's growth and profits are immense, it's not like the market couldn't bear more competitors. Also, the current situation is geopolitical insanity. It feels like China and the U.S. are on…

It's insanely hard. TSMC is so dominant because they have very, very, deep institutional knowledge. Even if you have billions to invest it's not easy to create that, and definitely impossible to do it short term. There's only 3 companies left chasing smaller nodes. Everyone else has given up and are focusing on revenue from high volume parts in older processes.

The only three are Samsung, Intel, and TSMC. Idk why going on with Intel but Samsung should BSs doing better but that institutional knowledge that TSMC has is crazy. They all technically invest in asml that makes the machines. If I had to redo my education I’d get into electrical engineering just for this.

Re: The first two custom silicon chips designed by Microsoft for its cloud

#187

Post by deepnotderp »

StevePerkins wrote: post #146
scarface_74 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It blows my mind that not only are Apple, Nvidia, and all other enormous "chip makers" fabless... but there's ONE single company actually making the majority of all their chips. Why aren't any other companies entering this space? TSMC's growth and profits are immense, it's not like the market couldn't bear more competitors. Also, the current situation is geopolitical insanity. It feels like China and the U.S. are on…

It’s not for a lack of trying on Samsung’s and intel’s part that tsmc is dominant ;)

Re: The first two custom silicon chips designed by Microsoft for its cloud

#188

Post by kccqzy »

andy_xor_andrew wrote: post #12

Damn, Microsoft is playing all sides of this, huh. Within a ten minute window: - Satya announced GPT-4 runs (at least partly) on a new AMD offering - Satya announced an in-house chip for ML acceleration - Satya brings NVidia CEO Jensen Huang on stage they've got every horse in the race, huh (disclaimer, I work for MS but all the stuff talked about here far is waaaay above my paygrade haha, and all brand new info to m…

Every reasonable company in that situation needs to play all sides of this. Even the comically bad management at Google understands this: Google has their own LLMs, their own hardware for ML, and they also buy a ton of nvidia chips for cloud customers. It's a no brainer.

Re: The first two custom silicon chips designed by Microsoft for its cloud

#189

Post by Flameancer »

tester756 wrote: post #165
StevePerkins wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It blows my mind that not only are Apple, Nvidia, and all other enormous "chip makers" fabless... but there's ONE single company actually making the majority of all their chips. Why aren't any other companies entering this space? TSMC's growth and profits are immense, it's not like the market couldn't bear more competitors. Also, the current situation is geopolitical insanity. It feels like China and the U.S. are on…

>Why aren't any other companies entering this space? There are? INTC and Samsung? >falling exclusively under PROC control It wouldnt fall under PROC control. It would be destroyed.

Plus I don’t even think PRoC would know how to operate the EUV machines.

Re: The first two custom silicon chips designed by Microsoft for its cloud

#190

Post by kccqzy »

lnsru wrote: post #19

I wish I could work in some team designing these chips. Maia is probably my dream product to work on. Super new, super cool and one of it’s kind.

In my experience working on anything that's exciting and full of marketing buzz is a sure road to burnout, with hype-dictated unrealistic deadlines and all.

My personal preference is to avoid this.

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