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We were wrong about GPUs

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Re: We were wrong about GPUs

#541

Post by throwaway2037 »

ehnto wrote: post #260
throwaway2037 wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disgree with your sentiment. One thing that is constant in my experience as a computer programmer, there are always "old" computer programmers complaining that there are too many abstractions.

You cannot see any way in which we run out of possible abstraction layers? I think in the past we have assumed that was natural language, but I think natural language is a pretty poor programming language. What people actually want when they say that, is for someone to read all the nuance out of their mind and codify it. I don't think we actually have been abstracting new layers over the past day 5-10 years anyway. M…

    > Most of what I see is moving sideways, not up the stack. Covering more breadth not height or depth, of abstractions.
I don't follow your logic. This comment is so vague. Do you have a specific example?

Re: We were wrong about GPUs

#542

Post by khana »

freedomben wrote: post #66

> The biggest problem: developers don’t want GPUs. They don’t even want AI/ML models. They want LLMs. System engineers may have smart, fussy opinions on how to get their models loaded with CUDA, and what the best GPU is. But software developers don’t care about any of that. When a software developer shipping an app comes looking for a way for their app to deliver prompts to an LLM, you can’t just give them a GPU. I'm…

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Re: We were wrong about GPUs

#543

Post by khana »

devmor wrote: post #148

The emotion in this article hits home to me. There have been several points in my career where I worked hard for long hours to develop a strong, clever solution to a problem that ultimately was solved by something cheap because the ultimate consumer didn’t care about what we expected them to care about. It sucks from a business perspective of course, but it also sucks from the perspective of someone who takes pride i…

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Re: We were wrong about GPUs

#544

Post by lifeisstillgood »

imtringued wrote: post #388
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes - but the amount of code that loves Amdahls law, is tiny compared to amount code churned out each day that can never run parallel over 1M cores - no matter how clever a compiler gets. I cannot work out if we pack enough parallel problems in the world or just lack a programming language to describe them

I don't get this. One of the worst computational problems holding back robotics is non linear model predictive control. You have 1-2 ms of time to build and solve a QP or a series of QP problems in the non linear case over a horizon of N time steps. 100% accurate MPC is inherently sequential. You must calculate the time step t_1 before t_2, because your joint positions are influenced by the control signal u_1. This m…

Ok - wow please point at more reading across this :-)

Re: We were wrong about GPUs

#545

Post by [deleted] »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #83

I have a timeline that I am still trying to work through but it goes like this : 2012 - moores law basically ends - nand gates do t get smaller just more cleverly wrapped. Single threaded execution more or less stops at 2 GHz and has remained there. 2012-2022 - no one notices single threaded is stalled because everything moves to VMs in the cloud - the excess parallel compute from each generation is just shared out i…

[deleted]

Re: We were wrong about GPUs

#546

Post by StefanBatory »

godelski wrote: post #531
StefanBatory wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> False dichotomy. There's no reason we can't have both. I'd kinda want to argue with that - it is true, but we don't live in vacuum. Most programmers (me included, don't worry) aren't that skilled, and after work not everyone will want to study more. This is something that could be resolved by changing cultural focus, but like other things involving people, it's easier to change the system/procedures than habits.

Are you wanting to argue or discuss? You can agree in part and disagree with another part. Doesn't have to be an argument. To your point I agree. I would argue that employers should be giving time for employees to better themselves. It's the nature of any job like this where innovation takes place. It's common among engineers, physicists, chemists, biologists, lawyers, pilots, and others to have time to learn. Doctor…

Sorry, discuss, not argue.

I do agree with you, though. I have fears though on how much can that be a thing in reality - because I cannot disagree that this is a right approach.

Re: We were wrong about GPUs

#547

Post by genevra »

kylewpppd wrote: post #522
dahart wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m surprised nobody has yet (as of this writing) pointed out that Moore’s Law never claimed anything about single threaded execution or clock rates. Moore’s Law is that the number of transistors doubles every two years, and that trend has continued since 2012. It looks like maybe the slope changed slightly starting around 2006, but it’s funny because this comment ends complaining that Moore’s Law is too good after c…

Sadly, Moore’s law is often cited, but never read. It’s only 3 pages. http://cva.stanford.edu/classes/cs99s/papers/moore-crammingm... But to further needle, the law is

computer go faster over time

Re: We were wrong about GPUs

#549

Post by anthk »

inkyoto wrote: post #525
alexjplant wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For example, students who study game programming (yes, it is a thing) do not get taught the CPU architectures or low-level programming in assembly; they have no idea what a pointer is. Freshly graduated software engineers have no idea what a netmask is and how it helps in reading a routing table; they do not know what a route is, either. > So modern ways of teaching are one problem. IME school is for academic disco…

> […] self-directed learning. And this is whom I ended up hiring – young engineers with curious minds, who are willing to self-learn and are continuously engaged in the self-learning process. I also continuously suggest interesting, prospective, and relevant new things to take a look into, and they seem to be very happy to go away, pick the subject of study apart, and, if they find it useful, incorporate it into thei…

Maybe in the US. Any self-titled Engineer in Europe with no knowledge of CPU's, registers, stacks, concurrency, process management, scheduling, O-notation, dynamic systems, EE, and a bigass chunk of Math from Linear to Abstract it would be insta-bashed down in the spot with no degree at all.

Here in Spain atthe most basic uni you are almost being able to write a Minix clone from scratch into some easy CPU (Risc-V maybe) from all the knowledge you got.

I am no Engineer (trade/voc arts, just a sysadmin) and I can write a small CHIP8 emulator at least....

Re: We were wrong about GPUs

#550

Post by anthk »

chii wrote: post #270
freedomben wrote: post #66

> The biggest problem: developers don’t want GPUs. They don’t even want AI/ML models. They want LLMs. System engineers may have smart, fussy opinions on how to get their models loaded with CUDA, and what the best GPU is. But software developers don’t care about any of that. When a software developer shipping an app comes looking for a way for their app to deliver prompts to an LLM, you can’t just give them a GPU. I'm…

> They don't want to have to understand DNS, linux, or anything else beyond whatever framework they are using. tell me whether there's many brick layers who wants to understand the chemical composition of their bricks.

In my country I think the vocational/trade degree -which might lie between HS and uni level- on car mechanics has basic physics, mechanics and maybe some chemistry.

Ditto for the rest of technical voc degrees.

If you think you can do IT without at least a trade degree on understanding the low level components interact, (and I'm not talking about CS level, concurrency with CSP, O-notation, linear+discrete algebra... but basic stuff such as networking protocols, basic SQL database normalizations, system administration, configuration, how the OS boots, how processes work -idle, active, waiting..., if you don't get that, you will be fired faster than anyone around.

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