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Anthropic expands partnership with Google and Broadcom for next-gen compute

anthropic.com

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Re: Anthropic expands partnership with Google and Broadcom for next-gen compute

#31

Post by [deleted] »

xvector wrote: post #30
alfalfasprout wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% agreed. Sadly, lots of people out there with the "trust me bro, just need more compute". Hopefully we don't consume all the planet's resources trying.

I reevaluated my priors long ago when I saw that scaling laws show no sign of stopping, no sign of plateau. Strangely some people on HN seem to desperately cling to the notion that it's all going to come to a halt. This is unscientific. What evidence do you have - any evidence - that the scaling laws are due to come to an end?

[deleted]

Re: Anthropic expands partnership with Google and Broadcom for next-gen compute

#32

Post by thundergolfer »

cebert wrote: post #22

I’m surprised Anthropic wanted to partner with Broadcom when they have such a negative reputation with antics such as their VMWare acquisition.

Broadcom builds the TPU chip. Google designs it. You can’t avoid partnering with Broadcom if you want TPUs in significant volume .

Re: Anthropic expands partnership with Google and Broadcom for next-gen compute

#33

Post by alephnerd »

thundergolfer wrote: post #32
cebert wrote: post #22

I’m surprised Anthropic wanted to partner with Broadcom when they have such a negative reputation with antics such as their VMWare acquisition.

Broadcom builds the TPU chip. Google designs it. You can’t avoid partnering with Broadcom if you want TPUs in significant volume .

Broadcom designs it as well [0], though GCP also works on design as well.

[0] - https://www.broadcom.com/products/custom-silicon

Re: Anthropic expands partnership with Google and Broadcom for next-gen compute

#34

Post by ggm »

cebert wrote: post #22

I’m surprised Anthropic wanted to partner with Broadcom when they have such a negative reputation with antics such as their VMWare acquisition.

The VMware s/w rental market has no relevance to this deal, any more than the IBM role in data processing in germany in the 1930s had any relevance to their business in Israel in the 60s, or Oracle's failure in the DC market impacts licencing of the database product.

It's just not material. Broadcom make devices they need, and Broadcom want to sell those devices and exclude another VLSI company from selling, so the two have an interest in doing business. That's all there is to it.

About the most you could say is that the lawyers drafting whatever agreement they sign to, will reflect on the contract in regard to future changes of pricing and supply, in the light of what Broadcom did with VMWare licencing costs.

Re: Anthropic expands partnership with Google and Broadcom for next-gen compute

#35

Post by rishabhaiover »

xvector wrote: post #30
alfalfasprout wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% agreed. Sadly, lots of people out there with the "trust me bro, just need more compute". Hopefully we don't consume all the planet's resources trying.

I reevaluated my priors long ago when I saw that scaling laws show no sign of stopping, no sign of plateau. Strangely some people on HN seem to desperately cling to the notion that it's all going to come to a halt. This is unscientific. What evidence do you have - any evidence - that the scaling laws are due to come to an end?

I suspect it's not that people do not see the progress, they fail to fully trust laws not truly backed by physics like the transistor laws. We empirically see that scaling works and continue to work.

Re: Anthropic expands partnership with Google and Broadcom for next-gen compute

#36

Post by 0x3f »

xvector wrote: post #30
alfalfasprout wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% agreed. Sadly, lots of people out there with the "trust me bro, just need more compute". Hopefully we don't consume all the planet's resources trying.

I reevaluated my priors long ago when I saw that scaling laws show no sign of stopping, no sign of plateau. Strangely some people on HN seem to desperately cling to the notion that it's all going to come to a halt. This is unscientific. What evidence do you have - any evidence - that the scaling laws are due to come to an end?

All the curves have been levelling off as expected. Not really sure what you're talking about.

Re: Anthropic expands partnership with Google and Broadcom for next-gen compute

#37

Post by Eufrat »

teaearlgraycold wrote: post #6
Eufrat wrote: post #4

Can someone explain why everything is being marketed in terms of power consumption?

Because that’s the limiting factor

I feel like that’s a bit glib?

Surely, there should be some more critical questions posed by why just buying a bunch of GPUs is a good idea? It just feels like a cheap way to show that growth is happening. It feels a bit much like FOMO. It feels like nobody with the capital is questioning whether this is actually a good idea or even a desirable way to improve AI models or even if that is money well spent. 1 GW is a lot of power. My understanding is that it is the equivalent to the instantaneous demand of a city like Seattle. This is absurd.

It feels like there is some awareness that asking for gigawatts if not terrawatts of compute probably needs more justification than has been proffered and the big banks are already trying to CYA themselves by publishing reports saying AI has not contributed meaningfully to the economy like Goldman Sachs recently did.

Re: Anthropic expands partnership with Google and Broadcom for next-gen compute

#38

Post by bryogenic »

erelong wrote: post #21
teaearlgraycold wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if this is satire. Edit: What we have built is a natural language interface to existing, textually recorded, information. Transformers cannot learn the whole universe because the universe has not yet been recorded into text.

Poe's (c)law?

Poe’s (C)law: The more absurd AI-generated content becomes, the more likely people are to believe it is real.

Re: Anthropic expands partnership with Google and Broadcom for next-gen compute

#39

Post by twoodfin »

skybrian wrote: post #12

I guess gigawatts is how we roughly measure computing capacity at the datacenter scale? Also saw something similar here: > Costs and pricing are expressed per “token”, but the published data immediately seems to admit that this is a bad choice of unit because it costs a lot more to output a token than input one. It seems to me that the actual marginal quantity being produced and consumed is “processing power”, which…

That these data centers can turn electricity + a little bit of fairly simple software directly into consumer and business value is pretty much the whole story.

Compare what you need to add to AWS EC2 to get the same result, above and beyond the electricity.

Re: Anthropic expands partnership with Google and Broadcom for next-gen compute

#40

Post by FridgeSeal »

xvector wrote: post #30
alfalfasprout wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% agreed. Sadly, lots of people out there with the "trust me bro, just need more compute". Hopefully we don't consume all the planet's resources trying.

I reevaluated my priors long ago when I saw that scaling laws show no sign of stopping, no sign of plateau. Strangely some people on HN seem to desperately cling to the notion that it's all going to come to a halt. This is unscientific. What evidence do you have - any evidence - that the scaling laws are due to come to an end?

The issue people have isn’t some interpretation of scaling laws, it’s whether the planet’s ecology is goi g to be able to sustain this endeavour.

I shouldn’t have to say this out loud, but if the environment collapses, we will die, and no amount of “just a bit more scaling bro, just think of the gains” will matter.

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