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Nvidia R&D chief on how AI is improving chip design

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Re: Nvidia R&D chief on how AI is improving chip design

#11

Post by root_axis »

nomel wrote: post #3
rektide wrote: post #2

Did nvidia just promise us singularity? :) Hard to read a talk like this from a pulpit & not see shout outs to the incredibly super-fantastic open-source innovative projects like OpenROAD which have been shipping amazingly well-routed-by-AI chips for a while now. There's papers you can cite, galore, many open source designs[1]. It's not like Nvidia is promising anyone else will benefit from this work. This seems to b…

> but it's also extremely NVidia that they're doing it all on their own. Having a lead in chip design is their literal bread and butter. I think it's extremely "publicly traded company" more than "NVidia". Do you have an example of a company releasing an open source version of their secret sauce (foundation of their profits)?

> Having a lead in chip design is their literal bread and butter

Sounds tasty, I'll have to take a trip to the nvidia cafe some time =)

Re: Nvidia R&D chief on how AI is improving chip design

#12

Post by rrss »

rektide wrote: post #2

Did nvidia just promise us singularity? :) Hard to read a talk like this from a pulpit & not see shout outs to the incredibly super-fantastic open-source innovative projects like OpenROAD which have been shipping amazingly well-routed-by-AI chips for a while now. There's papers you can cite, galore, many open source designs[1]. It's not like Nvidia is promising anyone else will benefit from this work. This seems to b…

which openroad tools use "AI" rather than normal optimization like traditional EDA tools have used for decades?

Re: Nvidia R&D chief on how AI is improving chip design

#13

Post by blihp »

rektide wrote: post #5
nomel wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but it's also extremely NVidia that they're doing it all on their own. Having a lead in chip design is their literal bread and butter. I think it's extremely "publicly traded company" more than "NVidia". Do you have an example of a company releasing an open source version of their secret sauce (foundation of their profits)?

> Do you have an example of a company releasing an open source version of their secret sauce? The chip design itself should be the secret sauce. Not the tools you make the chip with. Nvidia is resolutely not-contributing. Many other companies are starting to get onboard with open chip design. This doesn't mean the chips have to be open, but the tooling needs to be something shared & co-developable. If this is a littl…

> The chip design itself should be the secret sauce. Not the tools you make the chip with.

The secret sauce is generally whatever gives one a competitive advantage. Businesses typically open things up when the want to reduce the cost of something and/or cause pain for someone else (i.e. killing their cash cow), not because they're benevolent and want to share.

> I challenge you to answer your own question in reverse: are any companies other than Nvidia embarking up AI/ML chipmaking in a closed fashion? There probably are, let's follow & watch them.

Isn't Google's floorplanning work closed source? https://ai.googleblog.com/2020/04/chip-design-with-deep-rein...

Re: Nvidia R&D chief on how AI is improving chip design

#14

Post by Dylan16807 »

bsder wrote: post #10

What is extremely telling is what is missing ... Design Rule Checking (DRC) and Layout Vs Schematic (LVS). These require: 1) Longer bit length arithmetic 32-bit float simply isn't enough. 64-bit float is close, but limited. You really want 128-bit integer. And nVidia isn't delivering that. 2) Real algorithmic improvements We're still stuck with computational geometry algorithms that don't parallelize. It would be awf…

> You really want 128-bit integer. And nVidia isn't delivering that.

How much slower (per unit area) is that to do in software, compared to a full 128-bit hardware unit?

Re: Nvidia R&D chief on how AI is improving chip design

#15

Post by rektide »

Cyph0n wrote: post #9
rektide wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you have an example of a company releasing an open source version of their secret sauce? The chip design itself should be the secret sauce. Not the tools you make the chip with. Nvidia is resolutely not-contributing. Many other companies are starting to get onboard with open chip design. This doesn't mean the chips have to be open, but the tooling needs to be something shared & co-developable. If this is a littl…

> The chip design itself should be the secret sauce. Not the tools you make the chip with. I’m sure Cadence, Synopsys, and Mentor would love to hear more about this.

Everyone keeps hammering home how much of the process is proprietary. Whose interest is that in though? Is it in Nvidias & Intels & Qualcomm's interest to let these chip design software companies have extremely proprietary cake, that no one can advance or enhance, that has no machine-learning capabilities surrounding it?

To me it feels like so many are missing the picture here. Chip designers ought to cooperate on tooling, to burst exactly this batch of crooks you've just cited's game. Designers should stop being held back by limited, small minded, heavily controlled proprietary software, & collaborate on making a better tooled world we can all openly advance.

Some day I hope we have similar overthrows of ASML & other layers of the stack, as what's happening in chip design now (for basically everyone except nvidia and apple, the two behemoths). Competition & cooperation mixing at various levels is good, is healthy, keeps the world from ossifying.

Edit: oh look, a comment full of these same proprietary chip-design-software companies (not chip-designers) trying to make ML software! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31092673

Re: Nvidia R&D chief on how AI is improving chip design

#16

Post by rrss »

rektide wrote: post #5
nomel wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but it's also extremely NVidia that they're doing it all on their own. Having a lead in chip design is their literal bread and butter. I think it's extremely "publicly traded company" more than "NVidia". Do you have an example of a company releasing an open source version of their secret sauce (foundation of their profits)?

> Do you have an example of a company releasing an open source version of their secret sauce? The chip design itself should be the secret sauce. Not the tools you make the chip with. Nvidia is resolutely not-contributing. Many other companies are starting to get onboard with open chip design. This doesn't mean the chips have to be open, but the tooling needs to be something shared & co-developable. If this is a littl…

> are any companies other than Nvidia embarking up AI/ML chipmaking in a closed fashion?

https://www.cadence.com/en_US/home/solutions/machine-learnin...

https://www.synopsys.com/implementation-and-signoff/ml-ai-de...

https://www.plm.automation.siemens.com/global/en/our-story/n...

I think you'll be hard pressed to find any company using open source tools to design a business-critical chip for a foundry that gives any information without an NDA.

AFAIK Google doesn't have a open-source ASIC design for OpenTitan, and WD doesn't have an open-source ASIC design for SweRV.

there are a lot of interesting initiatives, but in the semiconductor industry open source tooling and processes are only a tiny niche that a few companies are playing around with.

Re: Nvidia R&D chief on how AI is improving chip design

#17

Post by _jal »

rektide wrote: post #15
Cyph0n wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The chip design itself should be the secret sauce. Not the tools you make the chip with. I’m sure Cadence, Synopsys, and Mentor would love to hear more about this.

Everyone keeps hammering home how much of the process is proprietary. Whose interest is that in though? Is it in Nvidias & Intels & Qualcomm's interest to let these chip design software companies have extremely proprietary cake, that no one can advance or enhance, that has no machine-learning capabilities surrounding it? To me it feels like so many are missing the picture here. Chip designers ought to cooperate on to…

Let the tooling classes tremble at an open source revolution. The chip designers have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.

Fabbing Folks of All Countries, Unite!

Re: Nvidia R&D chief on how AI is improving chip design

#18

Post by [deleted] »

rektide wrote: post #15
Cyph0n wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The chip design itself should be the secret sauce. Not the tools you make the chip with. I’m sure Cadence, Synopsys, and Mentor would love to hear more about this.

Everyone keeps hammering home how much of the process is proprietary. Whose interest is that in though? Is it in Nvidias & Intels & Qualcomm's interest to let these chip design software companies have extremely proprietary cake, that no one can advance or enhance, that has no machine-learning capabilities surrounding it? To me it feels like so many are missing the picture here. Chip designers ought to cooperate on to…

[deleted]
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