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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

#271

Post by steve1977 »

bee_rider wrote: post #269
steve1977 wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s kind of a nice take actually. For people like me who did Windows systems engineering at the beginning of the millennium, Active Directory is a very household name. But there’s not much actual meaning behind it. Everything Microsoft was active in that era - Active Directory, Active Desktop, ActiveX, Active Server Pages (lives on as ASP.NET) and probably some more I forgot.

I should admit that I was somewhat lying, I’ve encountered Active Directory before and know it is something vaguely identity/login related. I was pretty confused the first time I encountered it, though. Could tell from context that it had something to do with accounts, but thought maybe it could be for syncing a user’s home directory or something! It actually isn’t a terrible name, in isolation, since a directory (li…

The term "directory" was actually already quite common for these kinds of systems (directory services) when AD came about, which is probably why it was called Active Directory. The Active bit was some kind of "en vogue" term for Microsoft back then, as mentioned ;)

It technically builts upon (amongst other systems) LDAP, the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol and X.500

I guess you could think of it more like a telephone directory - which again is also where the file system metaphor has its roots I guess. So the two are not so different in the end.

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

#272

Post by red-iron-pine »

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 feels like China and the U.S. are on a path to war in the next decade or so

they are literally having discussions in San Fran right now to reduce the likelihood of that happening. And it sounds like China is quite open to discussion, and the US as well.

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

#273

Post by red-iron-pine »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #203
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.

Eh, the process engineers I've talked to don't have a great life, at least here in the US. It seems inevitable you end up perpetually on call for some machine, and I don't mean some type of machine, I mean unit #23 over in fab #4 and then that's your baby for years. The pay is considerable worse than software too. I almost went to get a CE degree because I find it all so fascinating but ultimately I'm glad I didn't.

the pay is worse than software because you're competing with Asian wages in a manufacturing context, where the margins are slim.

the serious system architects, designers, and fab managers are doing just fine, software or not. the dudes in Phoenix who are getting pushed through 2-year degrees to help run a clean room are probably making 65k.

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

#274

Post by aseipp »

OoooooooO wrote: post #175
keep_reading wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The USA would certainly bomb it if they had to

TSMC fabs have bombs build in to destroy everything if PROC invades I've read.

I also have a bridge I can sell you. And trust me: you've never seen one like this, at rates like I'm offering! Buy now!

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

#275

Post by jonathanlydall »

mdaniel wrote: post #110
bonton89 wrote: post #46

Earlier 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 manage our small company’s Microsoft 365 / Azure tenant and only rarely need to use the portal.

A month or so ago my laptop was requiring a BitLocker recovery code before it would boot. I spent ages looking for Azure AD, before eventually discovering it was renamed to Entra. They should have had a transition period where it would have “ (formerly called Azure Active Directory)” on its name.

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

#276

Post by lazide »

adrian_b wrote: post #244
lazide wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

Kinda, companies of that scale regularly spend more than that on (often) random R&D.

Sure if there is a plausible ROI, they’d have no issues dropping that much money (actually far more). Revenues for fortune 500’s are going to be in the 10’s of billions anyway, and it wouldn’t be hard to make an argument that random AI project could increase that by a couple percent or decrease costs a couple percent, which would more than provide that ROI.

Their biggest issue is usually having anyone in leadership that has a clue enough to even propose something plausible, let alone get a team together to give it a plausible go.

If they have that, Capital is not the issue.

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

#277

Post by NicoJuicy »

red-iron-pine wrote: post #272
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 feels like China and the U.S. are on a path to war in the next decade or so they are literally having discussions in San Fran right now to reduce the likelihood of that happening. And it sounds like China is quite open to discussion, and the US as well.

Well. China is promising things and they'll ignore it as usual until they are sure to have the upperhand.

They are building navy fleet like no other.

Still harassing neighbors ( eg. Philippines).

Nothing changed. They just want a bigger advantage.

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

#278

Post by Affric »

airstrike wrote: post #68
xnx wrote: post #65

Chip manufacturers (including Nvidia) really missed where the market was going if customers like Microsoft, Amazon, etc. feel the need to make their own chips.

Microsoft, Amazon, etc. feel the need to make their own chips so that they don't let NVIDIA take all the profits, not because they think NVIDIA is incompetent

Bingo.

There are real profits in the chip space and considering that there are 3 fabs and one clear leader who will make anything for anyone this is a sign that NVIDIA are doing a great job.

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

#279

Post by ClimaxGravely »

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 went to school for CS while one of my best friends went for EE. It definitely seemed like the far more complex discipline.

In fact for a small project in an elective he programmed a computer vision system that was far ahead of anything me or my peers had made at the time in our CS program. He had pretty much zero programming experience.

I must admit he's a particularly smart person but it was crazy that I went on to make more money than him. His work is way more complicated than mine as far as I can tell.

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

#280

Post by ClimaxGravely »

ShamelessC wrote: post #96
belval wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Inferentia => inference, trainium => training. Given the usually naming of AWS product, having one where the name roughly matches what it does is pretty good? TPU is pretty good but is associated with Google. MTIA is an acronym but still maps to what the chip does. ~~"Cobalt" is worse as it does not mean anything~~ . Cobalt is the CPU chip, MAIA is the accelerator so this matches Meta's naming.

> 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.

Hahaha, it might not have worked but I would love to use a search engine called Search-ola
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