Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 282 posts

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

#211

Post by nl »

adrian_b wrote: post #70
rapsey wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

While NVIDIA provides the best absolute performance for training, Intel (i.e. Gaudi) already provides much better training performance per dollar. The funny thing is that this fact has been shown inadvertently by NVIDIA: https://www.servethehome.com/nvidia-shows-intel-gaudi2-is-4x...

Yeah no one really cares about this for large models. Iteration speed matters, and no one is waiting 50 times as long to train a LLM.

Intel has always published the "training per dollar" because no one else competes.

Even for fine tuning you are almost always better off getting smaller GPU cloud instances.

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

#212

Post by dgacmu »

wmf wrote: post #210
nl wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MS has offered FPGAs for years. AFAIK they aren't generally using them themselves, although I'd be interested to read otherwise.

Azure networking has been FPGA-based for years.

Yup. Started as project catapult: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/project-cat...

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

#213

Post by bri3d »

Flameancer wrote: post #184
buildbot wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No. I don’t know where this oft-repeated semiconductor meme came from, but it’s a really poor take.

ASML are solving a small subset of physics problems: how to project extremely small features. TSMC are solving many more physics problems: how to structure layers of doped silicon into transistors, how to structure those transistors into logic gates, and those logic gates into functional blocks. This is why silicon process is not just a matter of capital investment, and why nobody is going to show up overnight with 10 billion dollars and change things. It’s not that TSMC are the only ones with a big bag of cash to give ASML.

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

#214

Post by nextaccountic »

Flameancer wrote: post #185
jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If enough funding magically appeared, GlobalFoundries could be a contender, right?

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

#215

Post by throwaway2990 »

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…

> retake Taiwan

Take Taiwan. You can’t “retake” something you never had.

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

#216

Post by nradov »

blackoil wrote: post #200
keep_reading wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The USA would certainly bomb it if they had to

And, If china bombs ASML we'll be back to stone age.

How would China do that exactly? None of their bombers have sufficient range.

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

#217

Post by dfadsadsf »

nradov wrote: post #216
blackoil wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And, If china bombs ASML we'll be back to stone age.

How would China do that exactly? None of their bombers have sufficient range.

They have intercontinental ballistic missiles. If needed, they can be retrofitted with non-nuclear payload.

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

#218

Post by lmm »

hulitu wrote: post #83
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.

> Maia is probably my dream product to work on. I bet you haven't used any Microsoft product before. /s

A lot of Microsoft hardware is best-in-class, strangely enough.

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

#219

Post by scarface_74 »

goodbyesf wrote: post #183
bluedino wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It would be value destructive for Apple to buy TSMC and not service any other customers

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

#220

Post by rr808 »

Flameancer wrote: post #185
jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> If I had to redo my education I’d get into electrical engineering just for this.

This is the crazy thing. Such fundamental important technology but salaries generally suck. Much more money in cat memes and influencer channels.

Post reply on HN