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OpenAI unveils its first custom chip, built by Broadcom

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Re: OpenAI unveils its first custom chip, built by Broadcom

#281

Post by gpm »

NavinF wrote: post #224
ahartmetz wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and because most hardware sales except AI accelerators are down due to RAM prices, Broadcom probably can't otherwise use their allocation at TSMC.

Nope, not down. "total Personal Computing Device (PCD) market — comprising traditional PCs and tablets — posted 2.8% year-over-year growth in Q1 2026, with combined shipments reaching 103.3 million units. PC shipments grew 3% YoY with 65.6 million units" https://www.idc.com/promo/pcdforecast/ Q2 is forecasted to be negative, partly because of RAM prices like you said, but for the most part this is something that only…

According to your own source

> the full-year 2026 [PCD] outlook has been revised to −10.4% year-over-year

because

> erosion of consumer purchasing power amid regional inflation and currency volatility in many key markets, compounded by memory and storage shortages that are proving more severe than anticipated in the previous forecast cycle.

The positive Q1 YoY growth

> was largely the product of pull-forward demand, as both consumer and commercial buyers accelerated purchases ahead of anticipated price increases and limited product availability.

The idea that only nerds care about the cost of things is... absurd.

Re: OpenAI unveils its first custom chip, built by Broadcom

#282

Post by bsder »

nradov wrote: post #183
Aurornis wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hardware description languages (HDL) used in chip development are like programming languages. The existing models understand them and can do a lot with them. You don’t need to have separate, specialty models designed for this work to use LLMs in chip design workflows. Design verification also involves a lot of traditional programming which benefits from LLMs. So it’s not meaningless at all. You could download som…

Most HDL code is locked up behind corporate firewalls and not available as training data. While LLMs can handle it to an extent there's a lot of room for improvement. I'll bet that OpenAI and their competitors are racing to license this IP from major hardware vendors in order to compete in the chip design vertical.

There is quite a lot of Verilog/SystemVerilog and VHDL code in the wild. And hardware description language code is very simple and straightforward relative to programming code.

And the two things that take up VAST amounts of time in ASIC design are testbenches and timing closure.

A LOT of hardware design is testbenches to verify things. AI is REALLY GOOD at generating things like testbenches. And nobody really cares if the quality of your testbench code sucks as long as it validates what it claims to.

I don't know how good AI is at timing closure, but I wouldn't necessarily be surprised if it is pretty good at it up to the physical point. That's lots of textual output which you can put a constraint on.

Everything involving physical design, though, tends to be a disaster waiting to happen if you let AI loose on it.

Re: OpenAI unveils its first custom chip, built by Broadcom

#284

Post by stevenhuang »

dmitrygr wrote: post #213
dpe82 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why you're getting downvoted. I've used GPT-5.5 and Opus both for FPGA design with good results. We built a lot of tooling around it to help the models, but even without that they're definitely capable of designing digital logic.

My guess: it is that those who KNOW the subject realize that LLMs suck at it, and those who do not, do not realize it, since their output is plausible, and sometimes even works. This actually plays out across every field and is well documented. An expert can recognize the hallucinations and bullshit coming out of LLMs, while non-experts see plausible output and do not know enough to know it is BS.

Wrong. Myself and colleagues know the subject and they are useful in FPGA design. You should stop hallucinating about topics you don't have experience in.

Re: OpenAI unveils its first custom chip, built by Broadcom

#285

Post by mlinhares »

RugnirViking wrote: post #254
hailwren wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you get the newcomer novelty buff when your val approaches 13 digits.

Big companies are lumbering behemoth, crude assemblages of barely cobbled-together incentives and principal agent problems in a trenchcoat. Getting them to change direction, or worse, try something new at scale, is a massive undertaking

Nah, you just need to get the CEO behind it. Most coordination issues get solved when the CEO is breathing down your neck to get something done. Trouble is that they don't do this enough.

Re: OpenAI unveils its first custom chip, built by Broadcom

#286

Post by epolanski »

wmf wrote: post #270
signatoremo wrote: post #262

I haven't seen this discussed here: So far, the accelerator is showing cost savings of roughly 50% compared with typical AI graphics processing units, Broadcom Chief Executive Officer Hock Tan said in an interview. - [0] 50% cost saving. The picture changes so quickly, there are still a lot of low hanging fruits, that I find any discussion about whether a vendor has moats, or if they can recoup investment, is moot an…

If GPUs have 75% margin then 50% cheaper is no surprise.

Operational costs far outweight hardware cost.

Re: OpenAI unveils its first custom chip, built by Broadcom

#287

Post by glaslong »

groundzeros2015 wrote: post #278

This is starting to sound like startup scope creep. Instead of making the AI model it’s now custom silicon, web browsers, and consumer electronics?

Definitely has that smell... At the same time though, they NEED inference cost to drop substantially, and even better for them if it only happens for their models on their hardware.

I assume they're doing everything they can to make that happen model-side, but coming at it from the other end makes sense too if they can swing it.

Re: OpenAI unveils its first custom chip, built by Broadcom

#288

Post by knicholes »

Lukas_Skywalker wrote: post #219
knicholes wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll acknowledge that I don't know what I'm talking about. I really appreciated the clarity! Surely you find value in knowing that creating your own custom chips is almost doable by someone who doesn't know what they're talking about! (also, I am a troll, but in this case, just clueless)

Maybe the confusion stems from the word "chip". Creating a chip usually means designing and producing a microcontroller or a processor, not a printed circuit board that you populate with existing chips.

Ohhhhhh! Yes, that's exactly the problem. It all makes sense now. I was just piecing together an existing microcontroller and a mp3 module by printing a custom circuit board.

Re: OpenAI unveils its first custom chip, built by Broadcom

#289

Post by napierzaza »

sharkjacobs wrote: post #61

> Developed from design to production in nine months, accelerated by OpenAI’s models > the use of OpenAI models to accelerate parts of the design and optimization process. I wish there was more about this. As is I kind of have to assume that this is just meaningless marketing, like saying development was accelerated by Microsoft Office or their 5k LG Ultrafine 40-inch monitors. Like, if this was as big a deal as it k…

[dead]

Re: OpenAI unveils its first custom chip, built by Broadcom

#290

Post by Culonavirus »

estetlinus wrote: post #168
v5v3 wrote: post #19

>designed for initial deployment by the end of 2026 and expanding in the years ahead, So after the IPO and will be featured heavily in the IPO sales brochure as a future promise? I'm sceptical over any pre-IPO announcements.

Yeah, the narrative feels like pre-IPO shenanigans, and it looks like the lid on my laundry basket. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is a con.

Con or not it is an obvious thing they have to do. Might as well promise.

IIRC their biggest cost they're "hiding" in their financials by doing creative accounting is inference (putting it into marketing and whatnot, in the billions)... if they can't hide it in their S-1 then they have to rationalize it, either by a) increasing the prices (not gonna happen, with token based billing orgs are already watching their codex spends) or b) lowering the inference costs. You can lower that by "soft optimizing" (dumbing down) your models but then you have the other players breathing down your neck (see quick rise of Claude), or actually optimizing, in software and in hardware. We're like 5 years into the rise of LLMs, there's not THAT much left on the table unless you write to the metal you specifically designed for your models (and I'm pretty sure the lack of "nvidia tax" would help with covering most of the r&d costs of a custom solution, at least in the long term).

50% cheaper inference without losses in fidelity would unquestionably be a massive win for OpenAI.

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