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Nvidia and Salesforce double down on AI startup Cohere in $450M round

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Re: Nvidia and Salesforce double down on AI startup Cohere in $450M round

#21

Post by riku_iki »

talldayo wrote: post #15
riku_iki wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hate the industry for never learning how to get along and make a real CUDA competitor. there are google TPUs. Do they provide better pefrormance/dollar, or google also charges high margin, or Nvidia is doing some unique optimizations?

The TPU is basically an ASIC as far as I know; it competes against CUDA in a very small subset of it's featureset. CUDA is essentially a composition layer on top of multiple GPU features that optimizes them for general-purpose compute. In essence, nothing is stopping Apple or Google from making an Open Source CUDA replacement and undermining the demand for specialized GPGPU compute. The problem is that CUDA is massiv…

> The TPU is basically an ASIC as far as I know; it competes against CUDA in a very small subset of it's featureset. CUDA is essentially a composition layer on top of multiple GPU features that optimizes them for general-purpose compute.

my understanding is that compilers can compile some straighforward JAX, TF, Pytorch programs to both Cuda and TPU, so they in direct competition in current hot topics (LLM, deep learning).

Re: Nvidia and Salesforce double down on AI startup Cohere in $450M round

#22

Post by IncreasePosts »

behnamoh wrote: post #2

Man I hate Nvidia and their monopolistic behavior. Making 800% margins on H100s is just absolute greed imo. They make good GPUs but they don't deserve to be an almost $3T company...

If they sold them at 30% margins or whatever you think is reasonable, then scalpers would just pocket the 770%. Not sure how that is better for the ultimate purchasers or Nvidia.

Re: Nvidia and Salesforce double down on AI startup Cohere in $450M round

#23

Post by talldayo »

riku_iki wrote: post #21
talldayo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The TPU is basically an ASIC as far as I know; it competes against CUDA in a very small subset of it's featureset. CUDA is essentially a composition layer on top of multiple GPU features that optimizes them for general-purpose compute. In essence, nothing is stopping Apple or Google from making an Open Source CUDA replacement and undermining the demand for specialized GPGPU compute. The problem is that CUDA is massiv…

> The TPU is basically an ASIC as far as I know; it competes against CUDA in a very small subset of it's featureset. CUDA is essentially a composition layer on top of multiple GPU features that optimizes them for general-purpose compute. my understanding is that compilers can compile some straighforward JAX, TF, Pytorch programs to both Cuda and TPU, so they in direct competition in current hot topics (LLM, deep lear…

Right; but you can't cross-compile everything. This is really common in AI libraries, especially multi-target projects like ONNX: https://onnx.ai/

The math probably adds up in Google's favor with the TPUs, even if they end up being less efficient and slower per-unit than Nvidia hardware. They don't need to pay for the margins, and they can run them 24/7 for their intended purpose. The previous-generation TPUs can't be reused or resold for other purposes though, and if/when AI blows over as a trend you probably can't easily start mining crypto or doing HPC calculations like an Nvidia cluster would.

Re: Nvidia and Salesforce double down on AI startup Cohere in $450M round

#25

Post by DebtDeflation »

mrweasel wrote: post #11

Best description ever of what AI companies produce: "software systems that are trained on large amounts of data and can generate text". No further explanation of what Cohere might provide to it's customer of value, just the ability to generate text.

If we're going to waste electricity, I'd rather we waste it on AI than on mining Bitcoin. At least AI is providing some utility to its consumers and there's reason to believe it will provide even more in the future.

Re: Nvidia and Salesforce double down on AI startup Cohere in $450M round

#26

Post by talldatethrow »

behnamoh wrote: post #2

Man I hate Nvidia and their monopolistic behavior. Making 800% margins on H100s is just absolute greed imo. They make good GPUs but they don't deserve to be an almost $3T company...

Tech hardware companies are the only people where I'm not annoyed at their prices.

Want a fence built for you? $3000 for 2 days work with 96 pieces of wood.

Want a basic android phone with 4 gb of memory, 128 gb of storage, a camera, speakers, touch screen, wifi, cell tower connection, GPS, battery, charger and cable? $60 on sale at Walmart for a Moto G Power Stylus edition. (My current phone and that's what I paid a few months ago)

Re: Nvidia and Salesforce double down on AI startup Cohere in $450M round

#27

Post by debbiedowner »

betaby wrote: post #10
riku_iki wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I hate the industry for never learning how to get along and make a real CUDA competitor. there are google TPUs. Do they provide better pefrormance/dollar, or google also charges high margin, or Nvidia is doing some unique optimizations?

Our company can buy NVIDIA gear. Google TPU, well, is google's property I have no control over. This site is overrepresented by clod folks. In reality ~90% of the workloads are NOT cloud based. Unless one can buy Google/Amazon/Meta T/N/AI/PUs that unique optimizations are irrelevant for the most of the workloads.

Why 90%? Why don't you go on the cloud for training at least if it's not healthcare data?

Is it because you don't need to buy many gpus to do your workload?

Re: Nvidia and Salesforce double down on AI startup Cohere in $450M round

#28

Post by dcgudeman »

Spivak wrote: post #18
dcgudeman wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is the definition of monopoly: "the exclusive possession or control of the supply of or trade in a commodity or service." There are other huge players: AMD and Intel. Additionally Google and Amazon are producing their own AI hardware. Now can you explain to me how Nvidia has a monopoly?

Because monopoly means "wields monopoly power and engages in anticompetitive behavior that harms consumers." Having competition or not, having large market share or not doesn't matter one bit. One of ways of wielding monopoly power is no longer being a price taker and being able to set prices at in practice to whatever you want.

Your definition of monopoly contains a reference to "monopoly", so I am still not sure what your definition of monopoly is. It sounds like it is something like "big company that charges a price you think is high". Why do you think you know what the "right" price is. Isn't it a good thing the company delivering the most value is capturing the most profits? They will likely continue to deliver breakthroughs with the profits they are generating. Why would you want to kneecap a company generating so much value?

Re: Nvidia and Salesforce double down on AI startup Cohere in $450M round

#29

Post by andrei_says_ »

eamsen wrote: post #13
mrweasel wrote: post #11

Best description ever of what AI companies produce: "software systems that are trained on large amounts of data and can generate text". No further explanation of what Cohere might provide to it's customer of value, just the ability to generate text.

Yet, here we are, generating text. Some of which has value.

But often it’s hard to know which.

Re: Nvidia and Salesforce double down on AI startup Cohere in $450M round

#30

Post by ralph84 »

talldayo wrote: post #20
thorncorona wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then why aren't people competing with Nvidia? Why is OpenCL on life support and unsupported on major operating systems? Why are we doing this song-and-dance routine refusing to adopt certain GPU APIs but embracing closed ones instead? Because Nvidia invested 20 years into its API platform, and this advantage is slowly getting realized.

Well therein lies my confusion; why did their competitors get 10 years into making a competing API, and then give up? If the reason that OpenCL died is because Apple decided that they'd rather draw blood than work with the community, then yeah, this is a well-deserved failure on their part. Even Nvidia was willing to contribute to OpenCL; the only thing stopping us from living in a CUDA-agnostic world is the pointles…

Because Nvidia is run by a founder who has been playing the long game for the entire history of the company. Its competitors are run by non-founders who aren’t interested in the long game they’re interested in next quarter’s earnings.
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