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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

#371

Post by eggsome »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #271

So I’ve been wondering about “one or two levels back” chip design. If I understand it, 28nm chips (pre EUV) is just about suitable to run (not train just inference) frontier models. And so if I was a mid-level State would it be worth while to take my nascent chip industry and push it out to build a 28nm foundry and supporting eco-system. The models will come but the real challenge of the future is having enough compu…

But the energy requirements per token would be orders of magnitude worse than chips made at 3nm. So probably better for your hypothetical state to just pay the extra for more efficient chips so that they don't have (as much) of an energy problem.

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

#372

Post by fallat »

freakynit wrote: post #368
londons_explore wrote: post #192

I wanna see an inference chip where the weights are part of the rom of the chip. There would be 1 multiplier per weight (and since they're constant, the whole thing turns into a bunch of simple adders), and the total pipelined system throughput would be one token per clock cycle. That means you can probably have millions of users simultaneously using a single bit of silicon, with perhaps 500 million tokens per second…

This may be extreme, or, completely stupid, but, why are we not using genetics to "grow" chips in a chemical soup yet? Similar to Verilog/VHDL, don't we have some similar language to express circuits using gene sequences?

Do that at scale

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

#373

Post by [deleted] »

surajrmal wrote: post #307
zgao wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The typical way a chip effort in a non-chip company works is that the "design" is the RTL (e.g. SystemVerilog that defines the behavior of the chip) and then this is handed off to a third-party "design house" (such as Broadcom) that turns that code into a real image of a chip, which is called a GDS (basically you can think of this as a very big layer by layer photoshop file) that can actually be sent to a fab. This i…

I wonder if broadcomm borrowed IP between the Google tpu and this design. How would you ever know it didn't happen?

[deleted]

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

#376

Post by chamomeal »

knicholes wrote: post #129
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…

I tried making a button using Claude entirely (including the 3D printed enclosure) and it effed up pretty hard with the traces and the header spacing. The project was a big red arcade button that plays the "ah-my-groin.mp3" when pushed (from Simpsons). It did cool work on saving battery life, and the 3d enclosure was awesome, but yeah, I'm convinced I'd have to do another version or two of the custom chip until it ca…

Sounds like a super cool project. Gonna post the design anywhere?

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

#377

Post by freakynit »

fallat wrote: post #372
freakynit wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may be extreme, or, completely stupid, but, why are we not using genetics to "grow" chips in a chemical soup yet? Similar to Verilog/VHDL, don't we have some similar language to express circuits using gene sequences?

Do that at scale

Bacteria do that at scale, far far bigger than all chips combined. All it takes is chemical soup and a few starter seed dna's.

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

#379

Post by NBJack »

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote: post #329
NBJack wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, zero guarantees on that one. The Fire Phone was Jeff Bezos' personal baby, and we know how that went. Then there was the Apple G4 Cube with Steve Jobs, the Model X' Falcon Wing doors and Elon, and lets not even talk about the Metaverse and Zuck.

Actually, you've provided examples that prove the point. None of those were especially good (though everyone wanted the G4 Cube), and yet they made it to market anyway. Why? Because the CEO was behind it, breathing down their necks.

Pretty much every example is considered an abysmal failure that often costed the actual workers their careers while their CEO carried on.

If you consider that outcome a worthwhile endeavor, I don't know what else to say.

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

#380

Post by jwHollister »

lsaferite wrote: post #369
cm2187 wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Random thought. Once models stabilise, could you possibly hardcode the model in gates? Or are they too large for a single chip?

https://taalas.com/

wow if they can get something like this working, what happens to all this infrastructure? Hyperscalers have to be assuming the lifespan of that stuff wrong considering the next gen will be 1000x more efficient.
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