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Intel announces Arc B-series "Battlemage" discrete graphics with Linux support

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Re: Intel announces Arc B-series "Battlemage" discrete graphics with Linux support

#141

Post by ModernMech »

elorant wrote: post #131
Implicated wrote: post #101

12GB memory -.- I feel like _anyone_ who can pump out GPU's with 24GB+ of memory that are capable to use for py-stuff would benefit greatly. Even if it's not as performant as the NVIDIA options - just to be able to get the models to run, at whatever speed. They would fly off the shelves.

Would it though? How many people are running inference at home? Outside of enthusiasts I don't know anyone. Even companies don't self-host models and prefer to use APIs. Not that I wouldn't like a consumer GPU with tons of VRAM, but I think that the market for it is quite small for companies to invest building it. If you bother to look at Steam's hardware stats you'll notice that only a small percentage is using high…

It's a chicken and egg scenario. The main problem with running inference at home is the lack of hardware. If the hardware was there more people would do it. And it's not a problem if "enthusiasts" are the only ones using it because that's to be expected at this stage of the tech cycle. If the market is small just charge more, the enthusiasts will pay it. Once more enthusiasts are running inference at home, then the late adopters will eventually come along.

Re: Intel announces Arc B-series "Battlemage" discrete graphics with Linux support

#142

Post by elorant »

treprinum wrote: post #26

Why don't they just release a basic GPU with 128GB RAM and eat NVidia's local generative AI lunch? The networking effect of all devs porting their LLMs etc. to that card would instantly put them as a major CUDA threat. But beancounters running the company would never get such an idea...

AMD has a 192GB GPU. I don’t see them eating NVidia’s lunch with it.

Re: Intel announces Arc B-series "Battlemage" discrete graphics with Linux support

#143

Post by m00x »

ModernMech wrote: post #141
elorant wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it though? How many people are running inference at home? Outside of enthusiasts I don't know anyone. Even companies don't self-host models and prefer to use APIs. Not that I wouldn't like a consumer GPU with tons of VRAM, but I think that the market for it is quite small for companies to invest building it. If you bother to look at Steam's hardware stats you'll notice that only a small percentage is using high…

It's a chicken and egg scenario. The main problem with running inference at home is the lack of hardware. If the hardware was there more people would do it. And it's not a problem if "enthusiasts" are the only ones using it because that's to be expected at this stage of the tech cycle. If the market is small just charge more, the enthusiasts will pay it. Once more enthusiasts are running inference at home, then the l…

Mac minis are great for this. They're cheap-ish and they can run quite large models at a decent speed if you run it with an MLX backend.

Re: Intel announces Arc B-series "Battlemage" discrete graphics with Linux support

#144

Post by tokioyoyo »

elorant wrote: post #131
Implicated wrote: post #101

12GB memory -.- I feel like _anyone_ who can pump out GPU's with 24GB+ of memory that are capable to use for py-stuff would benefit greatly. Even if it's not as performant as the NVIDIA options - just to be able to get the models to run, at whatever speed. They would fly off the shelves.

Would it though? How many people are running inference at home? Outside of enthusiasts I don't know anyone. Even companies don't self-host models and prefer to use APIs. Not that I wouldn't like a consumer GPU with tons of VRAM, but I think that the market for it is quite small for companies to invest building it. If you bother to look at Steam's hardware stats you'll notice that only a small percentage is using high…

This is the weird part, I saw the same comments in other threads. People keep saying how everyone yearns for local LLMs… but other than hardcore enthusiasts it just sounds like a bad investment? Like it’s a smaller market than gaming GPUs. And by the time anyone runs them locally, you’ll have bigger/better models and GPUs coming out, so you won’t even be able to make use of them. Maybe the whole “indoctrinate users to be a part of Intel ecosystem, so when they go work for big companies they would vouch for it” would have merit… if others weren’t innovating and making their products better (like NVIDIA).

Re: Intel announces Arc B-series "Battlemage" discrete graphics with Linux support

#146

Post by wtallis »

treprinum wrote: post #115
kevingadd wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you suggesting that Intel 'just' release a GPU at the same price point as an M4 Max SOC? And that there would be a large market for it if they did so? Seems like an extremely niche product that would be demanding to manufacture. The M4 Max makes sense because it's a complete system they can sell to Apple's price-insensitive audience, Intel doesn't have a captive market like that to sell bespoke LLM accelerator ca…

Nothing in my comment says about pricing it at the M4 Max level. Apple charges as much because they can (typing this on an $8000 M3 Max). 128GB LPDDR5 is dirt cheap these days just Apple adds its premium because they like to. Nothing prevents Intel from releasing a basic GPU with that much RAM for under $1k.

You're asking for a GPU die at least as large as NVIDIA's TU102 that was $1k in 2018 when paired with only 11GB of RAM (because $1k couldn't get you a fully-enabled die to use 12GB of RAM). I think you're off by at least a factor of two in your cost estimates.

Re: Intel announces Arc B-series "Battlemage" discrete graphics with Linux support

#147

Post by dgfitz »

jmward01 wrote: post #103

12GB max is a non-starter for ML work now. Why not come out with a reasonably priced 24gb card even if it isn't the fastest and target it at the ML dev world? Am I missing something here?

ML is about hit another winter. Maybe intel is ahead of industry.

Or we can keep asking high computers questions about programming.

Re: Intel announces Arc B-series "Battlemage" discrete graphics with Linux support

#149

Post by [deleted] »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #138
jmward01 wrote: post #103

12GB max is a non-starter for ML work now. Why not come out with a reasonably priced 24gb card even if it isn't the fastest and target it at the ML dev world? Am I missing something here?

These are $200 low end cards, the B5X0 cards. Presumably they have B7X0 and perhaps even B9X0 cards in the pipeline as well.

[deleted]

Re: Intel announces Arc B-series "Battlemage" discrete graphics with Linux support

#150

Post by CoastalCoder »

beAbU wrote: post #123
CoastalCoder wrote: post #21

Given Intel's recent troubles, I'm trying to decide how risky it is to invest in their platform. Especially discrete GPUs for Linux gaming Fortunately, having their Linux drivers be (mostly?) open source makes a purchase seem less risky.

Intel isn't going anywhere for at least a couple of hardware genrations. Buying a GPU is also not "investing" in anything. In 2 years' time you can replace it whith whatever is best value for money at that time.

> Buying a GPU is also not "investing" in anything.

It is in the (minor) sense that I'd rely on Intel for warranty support, driver updates (if closed source), and firmware fixes.

But I agree with your main point that the worst-case downside isn't that big of a deal.

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