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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

#241

Post by pjmlp »

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…

And this is why even if Windows is gone tomorrow, it will be a phyrric victory for the usual anti-Microsoft crowd, Microsoft will continue to matter in domains nowadays much more relevant to society.

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

#242

Post by pjmlp »

monlockandkey wrote: post #55
jimmaswell wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I care vastly more about raw performance than energy usage for my home systems. I also have good reasons to care about the best single core performance. I don't see x86 going away that fast.

Mobile, desktop, laptop, edge, server. These are the domains of compute. 4 out of the 5 domains value power efficiency. Laptop that were once x86 are now coming round to Arm because it really does make a better product i.e battery life and thermals. For the server, savings in energy and cost of chip manufacturing, datacentres and users both benefit.

Until the Windows developer community actually cares about ARM, they will continue to be nice to have laptops that most consumers won't care.

Microsoft isn't Apple or Google in this regard, dragging developers into new worlds, and it is quite telling that they had now to put up some kind of ARM advocacy action.

https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2023/10/16/window...

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

#243

Post by pjmlp »

MR4D wrote: post #77

Every day we get closer and closer to the hypothetical "five computers". [0] Software was first, and now every one of them have hardware too. Amazon Apple Goole Microsoft [0] - https://engines.egr.uh.edu/episode/1059

The irony being, they might even all be running some flavour of an UNIX clone, and it won't matter to the general public.

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

#244

Post by adrian_b »

lazide wrote: post #198
adrian_b wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That 50X is only if you can afford one thousand NVIDIA H100. There cannot be more than a handful of companies in the entire world that could afford such a huge price (tens of millions of $). In comparison with a still extremely expensive cluster of 64 NVIDIA H100, the difference in speed would reduce to only two to three times, and paying several times less for the entire training becomes very attractive.

You’ve got a really warped sense of scale if you think only a handful of companies couldn’t afford tens of millions of dollars. That’s complete pocket change for any of the Fortune 500.

The problem is not having so much money available.

Such a big expense only makes sense for a company where spending that amount would bring hundreds of millions of $ of additional revenue.

I doubt that any of the companies that have already spent such amounts have recovered even a small part of their expenses. It is more likely that they bet on future revenues, but it remains to be seen who will succeed to achieve that.

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

#245

Post by dataking »

msolujic wrote: post #226
Flameancer wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is one more player joining that small club, Huawei

I was under the impression they had their chips manufactured by SMIC.

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

#246

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#247

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

B1FF_PSUVM wrote: post #191
Flameancer wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I’d get into electrical engineering just for this I get the impression it's mostly physics guys.

Nah, neither physics nor electrical engineering. It's all chemistry at TSMC.

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

#248

Post by vasco »

rr808 wrote: post #220
Flameancer wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I took EECS, did a masters in analog design and I've only worked professionally making shitty SaaS websites. Making way more money with way less stress while still feeling accomplished that I learned how to do the complex stuff I wanted to know how. Very hard to make nearly as much otherwise.

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

#249

Post by michaelt »

spiralpolitik wrote: post #162
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.

Right now Intel is hamstrung because there is no separation between the fab and design sides. Nobody is going to trust Intel to fab their latest and greatest while the two sides are joined at the hip. The sooner Intel spins out the fab side into its own entity the better positioned it will be to pick up the business that TSMC doesn't have capacity for.

I've seen plenty of Amazon's competitors running on AWS, plenty of Google's competitors using gmail, and suchlike.

People will overlook a lot, if the product is compelling enough and the sales guys can keep a straight face while promising not to peek.

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

#250

Post by Goodroo »

msolujic wrote: post #226
Flameancer wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is one more player joining that small club, Huawei

If there's one company that has the capability to become a Samsung/Intel (IDM) on steroids, it is Huawei. They have the money,talent, determination and state backing.
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