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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

#401

Post by IshKebab »

whynotminot wrote: post #120
IshKebab wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The existing models understand them and can do a lot with them. In my experience they are not especially good at SystemVerilog. There's a lot of knowledge about it that is locked behind paywalls and it's very niche. My guess is the "from scratch" here is quite the exaggeration. Otherwise why did they need Broadcom?

Doesn’t Broadcom bring a lot more to bear here than just Verilog? Including relationships with the actual fabricators.

I doubt that is really significant - fabs are happy to work with anybody. What they will likely bring is:

* Physical design team (stupidly known as the "backend"). This is extremely specialised knowledge and most chip companies don't really want to have to deal with it if they can avoid it.

* IP blocks. Especially for annoying things like phys, memory controllers, USB controllers, PLLs, power, etc. These things are difficult to do, difficult to test, and often critical (good luck if your clock doesn't work...) I would not at all be surprised if Broadcom supplied CPUs too.

My total guess at what happened is Broadcom supplied most of a SoC and OpenAI added an LLM coprocessor module to it, and probably asked them to add like 10x more DRAM interfaces.

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

#402

Post by freakynit »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #381
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?

Are referencing the 1998 short story "Taklamakan" by Bruce Sterling?

Thanks.. just looked it up. Seems super interesting.

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

#403

Post by ngomez »

voidUpdate wrote: post #400
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…

> "Downside is this chip would be huuuuge - a whole wafer." Why don't we have chips like that? If a CPU the size of a postage stamp can do x amount of performance, imagine how much performance you could get if you used an entire wafer of chips running in parallel. Obviously there would be certain use cases, like you couldn't fit an entire wafer in a phone, but still

Using the space of an entire wafer for one chip would result in extremely low manufacturing yields. Even with state of the art silicon cleanrooms, there will still be defects in parts of the output.

With CPUs and GPUs, chip makers can disable faulty cores and bin them as lower SKUs to get some yield out of it. But if you're using an entire wafer to embed weights, and a speck of dust causes a printing defect that makes the weights wrong, the entire wafer is worthless.

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

#404

Post by indigo945 »

otterley wrote: post #386
jwHollister wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The question isn’t whether it works (it does); the question is whether there are buyers for hardware that is obsolete the day it ships. Models evolve much more quickly than hardware can keep up.

One obvious use case is edge computing, such as in industrial applications that cannot tolerate the risk of a network link or cloud service going down. Even embedded use cases are possible, such as an image classifier model in a security camera.

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

#406

Post by marcosqanil »

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?

I've worked for one of Europe's biggest synthetic biology labs and I know lots of biologists are low-key interested, but current players in semiconductors see it as kind of a tarpit.

IBM used to have a program using DNA origami for lithography back in 2009, which makes sense as lithography masks are a pain to make. I really wish I know why the program was stopped, but most of the researchers are retired by now.

As to whether you can just "grow" the whole chip from scratch, the answer is probably, but it would require lots of non-trivial scientific discoveries. For instance, we can't really make sizable chips using DNA without horrible defect rates. Biology is much better at making redundant rube goldberg machines, than very precise machines with no tolerance for errors.

I think we'd have a better chance of success if we made very weird kinds of chips that better took advantage of the medium, perhaps even something that we "train" rather than just use out of the box.

I'd love it if anyone here knew more about this !

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

#407

Post by indigo945 »

gpm wrote: post #281
NavinF wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

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

For hardware purchases, laypeople may go about it the other way from what nerds would do: instead of deciding what they need in terms of computing power and memory, and then finding a cheap offer for that, they just decide how much they want to spend, and then buy a device at that price point irrespective of its performance characteristics. If you shop like this, and would have purchased anything but a rock-bottom low-end device two years ago, prices have remained stable.

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