Live data from Hacker News

Soul Player C64 – A real transformer running on a 1 MHz Commodore 64

github.com

21–30 of 48 posts

Re: Soul Player C64 – A real transformer running on a 1 MHz Commodore 64

#22
Interesting, I’ve always thought neural network progress was primarily bottlenecked by compute.

If it turns out that LLM-like models can produce genuinely useful outputs on something as constrained as a Commodore 64—or even more convincingly, if someone manages to train a capable model within the limits of hardware from that era—it would suggest we may have left a lot of progress on the table. Not just in terms of efficiency, but in how we framed the problem space for decades.

Re: Soul Player C64 – A real transformer running on a 1 MHz Commodore 64

#23

Interesting, I’ve always thought neural network progress was primarily bottlenecked by compute. If it turns out that LLM-like models can produce genuinely useful outputs on something as constrained as a Commodore 64—or even more convincingly, if someone manages to train a capable model within the limits of hardware from that era—it would suggest we may have left a lot of progress on the table. Not just in terms of ef…

  YOU> hey
  C64> HELLO! RE SOUNDS ME. MEFUL!
60s per token for that doesn't strike me as genuinely useful.

Very, very cool project though!

Re: Soul Player C64 – A real transformer running on a 1 MHz Commodore 64

#24
post #23

Interesting, I’ve always thought neural network progress was primarily bottlenecked by compute. If it turns out that LLM-like models can produce genuinely useful outputs on something as constrained as a Commodore 64—or even more convincingly, if someone manages to train a capable model within the limits of hardware from that era—it would suggest we may have left a lot of progress on the table. Not just in terms of ef…

YOU> hey C64> HELLO! RE SOUNDS ME. MEFUL! 60s per token for that doesn't strike me as genuinely useful. Very, very cool project though!

not useful in a disaster scenario:

YOU> HELP I'M DROWNING

C64> YOU' HERE!

YOU> OH NO I'M ON FIRE

C64> IGLAY!

YOU> IM BEING SWALLOWED BE A SNAKE

C64>

YOU> BIRDS ARE NIPPING ON ME

C64> YOU

Re: Soul Player C64 – A real transformer running on a 1 MHz Commodore 64

#25
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YOU> hey C64> HELLO! RE SOUNDS ME. MEFUL! 60s per token for that doesn't strike me as genuinely useful. Very, very cool project though!

not useful in a disaster scenario: YOU> HELP I'M DROWNING C64> YOU' HERE! YOU> OH NO I'M ON FIRE C64> IGLAY! YOU> IM BEING SWALLOWED BE A SNAKE C64> YOU> BIRDS ARE NIPPING ON ME C64> YOU

Reminds me of Terry Davis' random word generator :')

Maybe there is deeper wisdom in there that we have yet to unearth

Re: Soul Player C64 – A real transformer running on a 1 MHz Commodore 64

#27
post #11

This would have blown me away back in the late 80s/early 90s. (Or maybe not, if it doesn't perform better than random, I haven't actually tried it out yet. Some more examples would have been nice!) I wonder how far you could push this while still staying period correct, e.g. by adding a REU (RAM Expansion Unit), or even a GeoRAM (basically a REU on steroids). SuperCPU would also be an option, but for me it's always b…

How fast is the “new” Commodore 64? Have not heard much about it since launch. Although, now that I look, it seems they are just shipping now. https://www.commodore.net/product-page/commodore-64-ultimate...

RAM can be increased to 16 MB and CPU speed to 48 GHz.

Re: Soul Player C64 – A real transformer running on a 1 MHz Commodore 64

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How fast is the “new” Commodore 64? Have not heard much about it since launch. Although, now that I look, it seems they are just shipping now. https://www.commodore.net/product-page/commodore-64-ultimate...

RAM can be increased to 16 MB and CPU speed to 48 GHz.

I’m sorry how many Hz???

Re: Soul Player C64 – A real transformer running on a 1 MHz Commodore 64

#29

Interesting, I’ve always thought neural network progress was primarily bottlenecked by compute. If it turns out that LLM-like models can produce genuinely useful outputs on something as constrained as a Commodore 64—or even more convincingly, if someone manages to train a capable model within the limits of hardware from that era—it would suggest we may have left a lot of progress on the table. Not just in terms of ef…

Next-word prediction features always existed for flip phones...

Re: Soul Player C64 – A real transformer running on a 1 MHz Commodore 64

#30
post #7

Ok now we need 1541 flash attention. I'm not sure what the venn diagram of knowledge to understand what that sentence is suggesting looks like, it's probably more crowded in the intersection than one might think.

How many 40+ AI pillers? Assume 10M devs in the world. 10% heard of flash attention, 1% heard of 1541 then 10,000
Post reply on HN