Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

OpenAI unveils its first custom chip, built by Broadcom

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 496 posts

Re: OpenAI unveils its first custom chip, built by Broadcom

#291

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

gaigalas wrote: post #215
KeplerBoy wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need a whole lot of software support if you just want to serve a single family of LLMs.

A lot of companies that serve a single family of LLMs seem to prefer nvidia though. Why is that? It's not just good drivers, which is what moats them for games and ML. It's a multi-decade work of making chips that are nice to program for and software infrastructure around them. Apple and Google have excelent chips, yet they needed to invest a lot in long-tail software projects to make those chips do actual premium wo…

> A lot of companies that serve a single family of LLMs seem to prefer nvidia though. Why is that?

If you write your tools for CUDA, you’re going to prefer hardware the runs CUSA.

How is there anything more to it than this?

Re: OpenAI unveils its first custom chip, built by Broadcom

#292

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

OrvalWintermute wrote: post #63

Word of Advice for OpenAI: Never underestimate Broadcom’s ability to shaft their own customers - VMware - CA Technologies - Symantec Enterprise Security - Brocade - LSI Corporation

I don’t know. I’m kind of glad that two of my least favorite companies are working together.

Re: OpenAI unveils its first custom chip, built by Broadcom

#293

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

MangoCoffee wrote: post #128

cheap token is more important now than ever. Chinese open weight model is getting pretty good. the real cost of AI adaption will come down to who (China or US) can provide cheap token for consumers and companies. Microsoft consider DeepSeek for their cowork is an example and now OpenAI with its own AI inference chip.

I’m not understanding. If cost per token hits the floor that does not mean that you want a model that uses tokens.

If the Chinese are optimizing for token usage, that’s also speed.

Why use more token if few do trick?

Re: OpenAI unveils its first custom chip, built by Broadcom

#295

Post by girvo »

dofm wrote: post #153
fl4regun wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

at the hardware company I work at, people are now using claude code and developing skills for it to do basic stuff like triage or do initial debug on failing tests, search for potential causes in RTL, generate skeleton documentation for designs etc

But isn't this rather the ordinary product of an LLM, now? Is it worth the claim that they are making in a press release?

> Is it worth the claim that they are making in a press release?

Definitely, yes, because being vague about it like they have been lets investors fill-in-the-blanks with whatever they want it to mean.

Re: OpenAI unveils its first custom chip, built by Broadcom

#296

Post by stinkbeetle »

selectodude wrote: post #257
MisterTea wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple didn't have the talent in-house until they bought Intrincity who worked with Samsung on Apple's earlier Arm chips as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrinsity

I think the folks at PA Semi had some chops too.

PA Semi group did the logic designs. I think they're talking about physical design though.

Re: OpenAI unveils its first custom chip, built by Broadcom

#297

Post by ahartmetz »

NavinF wrote: post #224
ahartmetz wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and because most hardware sales except AI accelerators are down due to RAM prices, Broadcom probably can't otherwise use their allocation at TSMC.

Nope, not down. "total Personal Computing Device (PCD) market — comprising traditional PCs and tablets — posted 2.8% year-over-year growth in Q1 2026, with combined shipments reaching 103.3 million units. PC shipments grew 3% YoY with 65.6 million units" https://www.idc.com/promo/pcdforecast/ Q2 is forecasted to be negative, partly because of RAM prices like you said, but for the most part this is something that only…

I was actually thinking of smartphones first because they seem to be the best-selling "personal computing devices" (different definition from IDC) and come with a lot of RAM (8-16 GB or so? Mine has 12) these days. And there I confused Broadcom with Qualcomm - Qualcomm's biggest end customers seem to be smartphone buyers.

I thought of PCs second since most chip manufacturers make some thing or another that goes into them (Broadcom probably more than Qualcomm), and yes it's very suprising that PC sales don't seem to be down yet.

Re: OpenAI unveils its first custom chip, built by Broadcom

#298

Post by reinitctxoffset »

selectodude wrote: post #257
MisterTea wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple didn't have the talent in-house until they bought Intrincity who worked with Samsung on Apple's earlier Arm chips as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrinsity

I think the folks at PA Semi had some chops too.

The way I heard it PA Semi was the singular driving force that led to Apple Silicon, but I'm not any kind of insider that's just the chatter I heard.

Whoever it was, whooo, that's hot shit. I remember an M1 MacBook Air just cleaning the clock of an Intel MacBook Pro and thinking "x86_64 has real competition again".

Great silicon. I'm over it with not having root on my own machine, so I've left the ecosystem, but it's really nice hardware, can't dispute that.

Re: OpenAI unveils its first custom chip, built by Broadcom

#299

Post by kccqzy »

mschuster91 wrote: post #276
kccqzy wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well Google has reduced reliance on Broadcom already. They found a new hardware partner, MediaTek, that’s probably much, much cheaper than Broadcom. https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/technology/articles/broadc...

> Well Google has reduced reliance on Broadcom already. They found a new hardware partner, MediaTek Oh dear god. I'm actually feeling sorry for Google at that point. Good luck, you'll need it...

My hunch is that this change is driven by bean counters.
Post reply on HN