Does cerebras make gaming GPUs, or is it enterprise-only?
They sound more like NPUs or TPUs than GPUs. Though that doesn't answer the question about the market they are targeting.
AI chipmaker Cerebras files for IPO
11–20 of 138 posts
Re: AI chipmaker Cerebras files for IPO
#12Cerebras is well-known in the AI chip market. They make chips that are an entire wafer. https://spectrum.ieee.org/cerebras-chip-cs3
Interesting that they’ve scaled on-chip memory sublinearly with the growth of transistors between their generations, I would’ve thought they would try to bump that number up. Maybe it’s not a major bottleneck for their training runs?
Re: AI chipmaker Cerebras files for IPO
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company makes the Cerebras chips. Cerebrus warned investors that any possible supply chain disruptions may hurt the company. They get their chips from the same company that Nvidia does.
They both contract TSMC to fabricate their chips. The actual design and R&D is still done by Nvidia, Cerebras, AMD, Groq, etc. Think of TSMC like Kinko's - they do printing and fabrication which is very low margins. The main PMF for Cerebras is in simulations, drug discovery, and ofc ML. As I've mentioned before on HN, Public-Private Drug Discovery and NatLab research has been a major driver for HPC over the past 20…
TSMC margins are over 30% and growing [1] - that's very far from "low".
[1] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TSM/taiwan-semicon...
Re: AI chipmaker Cerebras files for IPO
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company makes the Cerebras chips. Cerebrus warned investors that any possible supply chain disruptions may hurt the company. They get their chips from the same company that Nvidia does.
They both contract TSMC to fabricate their chips. The actual design and R&D is still done by Nvidia, Cerebras, AMD, Groq, etc. Think of TSMC like Kinko's - they do printing and fabrication which is very low margins. The main PMF for Cerebras is in simulations, drug discovery, and ofc ML. As I've mentioned before on HN, Public-Private Drug Discovery and NatLab research has been a major driver for HPC over the past 20…
TSMC has a market cap of 0.9T USD. It would be the 7 largest US company by market cap if it were one. Manufacturing chips is extremely profitable, at least in the current climate. It used to be that software is more profitable than hardware, which is more commoditized, but AI gave hardware companies a renaissance of sorts.
It's not a simple process at all but requires a lot of engineering and engineers to do it.
https://companiesmarketcap.com/usa/largest-companies-in-the-... https://companiesmarketcap.com/tsmc/marketcap/
Re: AI chipmaker Cerebras files for IPO
#15This is the first I've heard of Cerebras Systems. From the article >Cerebras had a net loss of $66.6 million in the first six months of 2024 on $136.4 million in sales, according to the filing. That doesn't sound very good. What makes them think they can compete with Nvidia, and why IPO right now? Are they trying to get government money to make chip fabs like Intel or something?
You seemed surprised that this company is having an IPO to actually raise funds for operations and expansion, vs as just an "exit" where VCs and other insiders can dump their shares onto the broader public.
I might be a bit suspicious if a company in some low-capital-intensive industry was IPOing while unprofitable, but this is chip making. Even if they're not making their own fabs this is still an industry with high capital requirements.
We should be thrilled at a company actually using an IPO for its original intended purpose as opposed to some financialization scheme.
Re: AI chipmaker Cerebras files for IPO
#16Cerebras is well-known in the AI chip market. They make chips that are an entire wafer. https://spectrum.ieee.org/cerebras-chip-cs3
Cerebrus made a great (now deleted) video on the whole computer hosting the wafer: https://web.archive.org/web/20230812020202/https://www.youtu...
It’s fascinating.
Re: AI chipmaker Cerebras files for IPO
#17I’m going to go ahead and predict this flubs long term. Not only is what they are doing very challenging, I’ve had some random brokerage house reach out to me multiple times about investing in this IPO. When your IPO process resorts to cold calling I don’t think it’s a good sign. Granted I have some associations with AI startups I don’t think that had anything to do with the outreach from the firm.
Re: AI chipmaker Cerebras files for IPO
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
They both contract TSMC to fabricate their chips. The actual design and R&D is still done by Nvidia, Cerebras, AMD, Groq, etc. Think of TSMC like Kinko's - they do printing and fabrication which is very low margins. The main PMF for Cerebras is in simulations, drug discovery, and ofc ML. As I've mentioned before on HN, Public-Private Drug Discovery and NatLab research has been a major driver for HPC over the past 20…
TSMC margins are over 30% and growing [1] - that's very far from "low". [1] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TSM/taiwan-semicon...
30% net due to a near monopoly and a recent upswing due to Nvidia.
Almost every other foundry system died because of low net margins.
Software (and fabless hardware like chip design) is expected to have 60-70% gross margins or the ability to reach that.
Semiconductors is part of TMT just like Software or Telecom, and this has an impact on available liquidity.
This is why TSMC is heavily subsidized by the Taiwanese government.
Re: AI chipmaker Cerebras files for IPO
#19Cerebras is well-known in the AI chip market. They make chips that are an entire wafer. https://spectrum.ieee.org/cerebras-chip-cs3
Interesting that they’ve scaled on-chip memory sublinearly with the growth of transistors between their generations, I would’ve thought they would try to bump that number up. Maybe it’s not a major bottleneck for their training runs?
SRAM is scaling significantly more slowly than logic in recent process nodes.
Re: AI chipmaker Cerebras files for IPO
#20Does cerebras make gaming GPUs, or is it enterprise-only?
The chip is huge. It wouldn't fit in any conceivable PC form card.