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AMD to buy Silo AI for $665M

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Re: AMD to buy Silo AI for $665M

#111

Post by nabla9 »

littlecranky67 wrote: post #34

I've been thinking that NVDA stock is massively overpriced - yes, AI is a hot topic, but their only advantage is the software stack. It is just a matter of time until Intel and AMD realize that they should join hands and do an open-source CUDA alternative for their respecitve GPUs (yes, Intel has competetive GPUs and just like AMD and Nvidia they will try to get a share of the AI chip market share).

> Intel has competitive GPUs

No they don't. Both Intel and AMD compare their newest GPU favorably against Nvidia's H100 that has been on the market longer and soon to be replaced and then it's never H100 NVL for a reason.

Intel and AMD can sell their GPU's only with lower profit margin. If they could match FLOPS per total ownership they would sell much better.

Both are years behind.

Re: AMD to buy Silo AI for $665M

#112

Post by szundi »

baobabKoodaa wrote: post #56
rvnx wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it brought instantly (at least partially) +12B USD on the valuation of AMD. This shows to investors that AMD is still in the race.

Yeah I saw the stock market uptick, but that is a kneejerk reaction by the public markets. It's not as if the public market participants have had ample time to evaluate the merits of the acquisition, and even then, if they are right or not.

Anyway, it seems market thinks this is a 20x value acquisition.

Re: AMD to buy Silo AI for $665M

#113

Post by szundi »

throwway120385 wrote: post #89
lyu07282 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That assumes that the reason AMD's software stack sucks is because of skill, not company culture, management or other reasons that won't change with this acquisition.

If it's a culture problem and the C-suite is aware of it, then one reason to buy a company with a working software stack is to percolate their culture into your company so you can be successful.

Hopefully the ceo of the acquired company gets a director role in AMD then at least, not subordinated a supposedly subpar cultured director already in AMD

Re: AMD to buy Silo AI for $665M

#114

Post by latchkey »

dotnet00 wrote: post #64
latchkey wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really is a fantastic piece of hardware. We just need the software to catch up.

Which tbf has been an apt description of AMD GPUs for the better part of a decade. Great hardware, god awful software and even worse long term software strategy. It's why the 'fine wine' spin on the long term performance of AMD GPUs exists in gaming circles.

You're totally right. That said, spending $665m on an AI company seems, at first glance, like a step in the right direction. I'm sure there are a 1000 ways they could have spent that much money, but hey... I do appreciate them at least trying to do something to resolve the issue. Another way to think of it is that now there is a whole team that isn't dedicated to nvidia.

Re: AMD to buy Silo AI for $665M

#115

Post by rubatuga »

Pandabob wrote: post #100
jacobgorm wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except the EU paid for the hardware https://eurohpc-ju.europa.eu/supercomputers/our-supercompute...

Came here to point this out. Silo never had to invest huge amounts on GPUs. A shrewd move by the founders.

There is debate about public investment into private ventures, but in this case it may provide long term benefits to Finland

Re: AMD to buy Silo AI for $665M

#116

Post by Conscat »

KeplerBoy wrote: post #105
stanleykm wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they are built on top of nvidia tooling and you can use nvidia tools to do more extensive profiling than other players offer.

True, gotta love Nsight Systems and Compute. That's the first hurdle of working with AMD GPUs, I have no idea what the GPU is actually doing because there is no quality profiler.

Is Omniperf/Omnitrace not very good? I haven't used it, but I have been using Nsight Systems recently and it looks comparable to me at a glance.

Re: AMD to buy Silo AI for $665M

#117

Post by latchkey »

nabla9 wrote: post #111
littlecranky67 wrote: post #34

I've been thinking that NVDA stock is massively overpriced - yes, AI is a hot topic, but their only advantage is the software stack. It is just a matter of time until Intel and AMD realize that they should join hands and do an open-source CUDA alternative for their respecitve GPUs (yes, Intel has competetive GPUs and just like AMD and Nvidia they will try to get a share of the AI chip market share).

> Intel has competitive GPUs No they don't. Both Intel and AMD compare their newest GPU favorably against Nvidia's H100 that has been on the market longer and soon to be replaced and then it's never H100 NVL for a reason. Intel and AMD can sell their GPU's only with lower profit margin. If they could match FLOPS per total ownership they would sell much better. Both are years behind.

Benchmarks were just run, MI300x is onpar/better than an H100. Next generation of MI (MI325x) is coming out end of the year and those specs look fantastic too. Especially on the all important memory front. 288GB is fantastic.

Both companies will leapfrog each other with new releases. Anyone who believes that there should only be a single vendor for all AI compute will quickly find themselves on the wrong side of history

Re: AMD to buy Silo AI for $665M

#118

Post by Keyframe »

SSLy wrote: post #4

My cursory understanding is that Silo is a developer of LLMs that run on top of compute platforms. Isn't the problem with no one using AMD's accelerators the fact that their programming environment is sub-par compared to CUDA, or even Apple's?

Maybe they can use LLMs now to program their platform for them?

Re: AMD to buy Silo AI for $665M

#119

Post by dotnet00 »

latchkey wrote: post #114
dotnet00 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which tbf has been an apt description of AMD GPUs for the better part of a decade. Great hardware, god awful software and even worse long term software strategy. It's why the 'fine wine' spin on the long term performance of AMD GPUs exists in gaming circles.

You're totally right. That said, spending $665m on an AI company seems, at first glance, like a step in the right direction. I'm sure there are a 1000 ways they could have spent that much money, but hey... I do appreciate them at least trying to do something to resolve the issue. Another way to think of it is that now there is a whole team that isn't dedicated to nvidia.

Yeah I'm not arguing against this acquisition, just commenting on how things have been so far. At this point I'm kind of apathetic, it's good if whatever they do eventually leads them to fixing their software woes, and I'll come back to their stuff then. If not, I'm fine with sticking to CUDA for now.

Ultimately they're all GPU programming languages, once you're good with one, switching to another one is not that hard (as long as the supporting software is good of course).

Re: AMD to buy Silo AI for $665M

#120

Post by cj »

RyanShook wrote: post #53
littlecranky67 wrote: post #34

I've been thinking that NVDA stock is massively overpriced - yes, AI is a hot topic, but their only advantage is the software stack. It is just a matter of time until Intel and AMD realize that they should join hands and do an open-source CUDA alternative for their respecitve GPUs (yes, Intel has competetive GPUs and just like AMD and Nvidia they will try to get a share of the AI chip market share).

2024 YTD returns: NVDA 172% AMD 27% INTC -30%

Stocks of companies that develop extremely niche and technical things is a tiny sliver of the stock market that I actually think communities like HN would be better at valuing than the market.

Technology stocks are the only ones I personally day trade for that reason. Example: at the beginning of a pandemic lockdowns, any HN user could have anticipated increased internet usage and buy Cloudflare/Fastly stock and made a lot of money before the rest of the market realized that CDN companies will significantly benefit from that specific macro event.

I'm not convinced the market (or market analysts) have a deep understanding of Nividia's long-term advantage. If they did, we would have seen a much slower and steadier valuation increase rather than the meteoric rise. Meteoric stock price rise/fall = the market is having trouble valuing the stock.

In other words, stock prices don't add much to the conversation.

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