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Previewing the Model Hardware Standard

anthropic.com

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Re: Previewing the Model Hardware Standard

#41

Post by TeMPOraL »

sigmoid10 wrote: post #38
sinab wrote: post #27

The standard makes sense: models work much better when devices expose standardized, machine-readable interfaces. But as far as I can tell, this technical "standard" isn't actually public yet (you have to apply for access to even see or implement it.) Anthropic says they plan to open source it later. Quite a departure from the way foundational hardware standards like USB and CAN were developed. You shouldn't need perm…

USB was developed by a big alliance of major software and hardware vendors. This stuff on the other hand always feels like Anthropic is just scared of dropping out of the news cycle because other companies are constantly releasing models or making them cheaper, while they currently have nothing real to offer themselves. MCP was a complete clusterfuck an announced at a time when OpenAI absolutely dominated with reason…

> The only reason it took off is because noone else bothered to make something better

Yes, and that alone is sufficient reason for them to do it. They did it with MCP. They did it with Skills. OpenAI did it with tools. All of these had many months, sometimes even years, of existing prior art. All of these could've been done much better, too. But "worse is better", first one to get a properly packaged MVP out the door and into spotlight wins, and then everyone is using that.

Re: Previewing the Model Hardware Standard

#42

Post by dyzone »

sinab wrote: post #27

The standard makes sense: models work much better when devices expose standardized, machine-readable interfaces. But as far as I can tell, this technical "standard" isn't actually public yet (you have to apply for access to even see or implement it.) Anthropic says they plan to open source it later. Quite a departure from the way foundational hardware standards like USB and CAN were developed. You shouldn't need perm…

They probably want to iterate on it with close partners before making it public

Re: Previewing the Model Hardware Standard

#47

Post by optimalsolver »

sinab wrote: post #27

The standard makes sense: models work much better when devices expose standardized, machine-readable interfaces. But as far as I can tell, this technical "standard" isn't actually public yet (you have to apply for access to even see or implement it.) Anthropic says they plan to open source it later. Quite a departure from the way foundational hardware standards like USB and CAN were developed. You shouldn't need perm…

>Anthropic says they plan to open source

Doubt.

Re: Previewing the Model Hardware Standard

#48

Post by wongarsu »

> The MHS driver uses a simple set of primitives—commands like “read” (for example, “get temperature”) or “write” (for example, “set temperature”)—that any hardware device can understand and act on. And it makes each device discoverable in a standard format, so that devices and agents can find each other and communicate across networks without needing a bespoke “translator” program in between.

> the MHS driver then automatically produces a reference file with information about a device’s general characteristics, such as what it can measure, what can be adjusted, and what safety limits will be enforced

But that's just USB. USB HID does all of that.

Any USB device can declare that it offers sensors like "Biometric: Body Temperature" or "Environmental: Temperature" or "Environmental: Surface Temperature".

I guess USB HID is designed for human input devices while they are more concerned about what you might call "output devices". And putting it in a driver gives you flexibility with legacy hardware

Re: Previewing the Model Hardware Standard

#49

Post by senordevnyc »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #14

MCP was a bucket of Not Invented Here nonsense, that ignored years of protocol design. It was incredibly jank and hard to run at any scale, for years and years. They finally looked at how other protocols do things, and made something that behaves in recent versions. But it's hard as heck to take this company at all seriously. The don't really care about ecosystems (AGENTS.md), they don't seem to know think or care mu…

MCP was a bucket of Not Invented Here nonsense, that ignored years of protocol design. It was incredibly jank and hard to run at any scale, for years and years.

Not that I disagree with your overall point, but MCP was initially released in Nov 2024, so it hasn’t even been two years.

Re: Previewing the Model Hardware Standard

#50

Post by lefra »

ctoth wrote: post #9
sheauwn wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems more like a basic instruction set, that will then be translated to something actionable for each different device. Seems like most of the work then will be in developing the drivers for whatever devices you want the LLM to access.

Yes, it turns the hardware driver problem into a translation problem (translate the hardware manual/datasheet into this protocol.) Guess what's really good/quick at translating things?

"Translating the datasheet into protocol ", is the essence of writing a hardware driver.

Also my experience with hardware is that the datasheet is often incomplete or misleading. Most of the time is spend fiddling with the hardware to understand exactly what needs to be done, in what order, and sometimes with what delay between commands, to make the damn thing work reliably in the way you want.

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