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Meta Unveils New AI Supercomputer

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Re: Meta Unveils New AI Supercomputer

#51
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think these sorts of computers use special GPUs that are industrial and used specifically for AI/ML work. I don't believe they've powered the super computer with 3080s and I also don't think they use the same underlying chips either (albeit they are probably built with the same raw material that might be in short supply).

Good luck building special GPUs in just two years, especially with what's happening regarding chip production right now. Not sure how they could have achieved a project of this size/scope unless they use off-the-shelf components, since the backlogs are so long and have been for some time now.

Facebook has been hiring FPGA engineers with ML experience since 2018 so I don't think this would be out of the question! But even so, Nvidia sell custom GPUs that aren't the same ones for gaming.

Re: Meta Unveils New AI Supercomputer

#52
post #5

“The experiences we’re building for the metaverse require enormous compute power…and RSC will enable new AI models that can learn from trillions of examples, understand hundreds of languages, and more,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg I don't really understand how AI processing is going to make the 'experiences' any better? This seems to me like investor fluff, saying they have some insane capability that other 'VR provider…

Hm, maybe they're optimizing DLRM models, since inefficient HW communication sometimes bottlenecks Facebook's data center performance for them [1]. The improvements would be better personalization, ie. monetization.

[1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2104.05158.pdf

Re: Meta Unveils New AI Supercomputer

#53
post #46
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ît is not about making experiences better, it's about modeling behavior as to sell stuff

Those models are surprisingly tractable. You're nowhere near as interesting and unique as you might think you are at scale. Evidence: actual work experience at building latent representations to characterize customer behavior at FAANG. It's hard to come up with something that really gets you, but it's not hard to come up with something likely to make you spend more. You're surprisingly predictable on that axis and ev…

I wouldn't think it would take putting in any hours to be a crazy outlier - just a markedly different value system.

Re: Meta Unveils New AI Supercomputer

#54
post #21

What is the difference between “a supercomputer” and “a bunch of racks of computers”? The actual difference between the two is quite diminished compared to years past and seems to reduce more to how a collection of computers is used and not what it is.

The big remaining one appears to be an unusually high speed interconnect. Infiniband, etc.

Yep, hetero multigpu fleet mixing high ram GPUs (40-80GB each on each A100) as multigpus w smaller (ex: ~12-16 GB T4s) nodes, w crazy interconnects locally (nvlink) and across nodes. And storage gets fun as well, like parallel SSD arrays for 100GB+/s combined per node. Then whatever legacy+hybrid CPU stuff. Ex: for stuff like PCIe, new generations that ~10x the bandwidth you'd see in a gamer box, and like 1-2 per GPU. Varies a lot for say log mining vs NN training, and even for diff NNs. Ex: Graph NNs end up needing more balanced CPU side.

Saturating a box with 500+ GB GPU RAM is fun. Only our gov users ask us for help on that typically: most of our users are commercial nowadays, but with much smaller/scaled down GPU rigs. I think that'll change as the fintechs keep improving and software gets easier, but they are still not there (outside of niches). Working on it :)

(If you like writing shaders, we are hiring :D )

Re: Meta Unveils New AI Supercomputer

#55
post #40

I used to work at a university where my professor had been in automatic speech recognition for a long time, but basically gave up on that line of research about 10 years ago because he figured that universities simply cannot compete budget wise with the big industry players. I suppose the same will soon be true for most ML-related areas of research sooner or later, at least as far as applied ML is concerned. Already,…

I hope a positive outcome of this will be that universities direct more of their research effort toward efficiency of network architectures and/or understandability.

Re: Meta Unveils New AI Supercomputer

#56
post #5

“The experiences we’re building for the metaverse require enormous compute power…and RSC will enable new AI models that can learn from trillions of examples, understand hundreds of languages, and more,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg I don't really understand how AI processing is going to make the 'experiences' any better? This seems to me like investor fluff, saying they have some insane capability that other 'VR provider…

There may be some possibilities. I'm not sure if it counts as AI but nevertheless a nice video:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BTETsm79D3A

There is never enough compute power. Dwarf Fortress on a supercomputer?

Re: Meta Unveils New AI Supercomputer

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I think we're in trouble. Walked over to friends' house over the weekend. It was a very nice, sunny weekend. Saw them through the window with their goggles on, rang the doorbell. They came to the door and I said, look how nice and sunny it it, we should go for a walk and they were like "oh, we had no idea it was so nice out because we were in Meta with our goggles on".

I don't see how this is a bad thing. What's wrong with preferring the metaverse to their sunny neighborhood? Honestly the matrix seems like the end game here and I'm all for it. Then it can be a sunny day in the neighborhood every day. The doom comes from the matrix being built by people who either don't have our best interests in mind, or aren't competent enough to build the system to correctly act in our best inter…

vitamin d deficiency

Re: Meta Unveils New AI Supercomputer

#60
post #11

Anybody else get the sense that we're just totally frickin doomed? Even if Yudkowsky is off about AGI (which is a big maybe!) in what possible world will this technology be used to make our individual lives better (assuming you're not a FAIR researcher?)

More people trapped inside on the metaverse = smaller crowds at outdoor recreation areas?

That would be a win-win for everyone.
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