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Benchmarking Google’s new TPUv2

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Re: Benchmarking Google’s new TPUv2

#2

Post by angrygoat »

Google claim 29x better performance-per-Watt with TPUs than contemporary GPUs[0]. Interesting to contrast that to the images-per-$ figure in this post, which is more like 2x.

I assume there's a high capital cost for this new hardware, but when they scale it up I wonder if the ratio of cost TPU to GPU will trend towards the ratio of power-per-Watt between the platforms? Seems like a natural limit, even if it never quite gets there.

[0] https://cloud.google.com/blog/big-data/2017/05/an-in-depth-l...

Re: Benchmarking Google’s new TPUv2

#4

Post by bhouston »

It is hard for Google to make money on these TPUs as the whole engineering cost has to be made back from its pricing on Google Cloud, where as with NVIDIA it can pay back its engineering costs via multiple mature channels (games, super computers, and multiple cloud providers.)

I wonder which is higher, the cost for creating the TPUs in terms of engineering and manufacturing or the cost differential in terms of usage as compared to NVIDIA's latest?

I worry about Google long term here. I am surprised the TPU doesn't kick the ass of the NVIDIA chips.

Re: Benchmarking Google’s new TPUv2

#5

Post by NelsonMinar »

chapill wrote: post #3

I wonder if Chinese companies will use (or be allowed to use) TPUs. It seems like a pretty obvious way to have the NSA scoop up any Chinese AI advancements China may want to keep secret.

I wonder which Chinese companies are developing their own processors like TPUs.

Re: Benchmarking Google’s new TPUv2

#6

Post by arcanus »

bhouston wrote: post #4

It is hard for Google to make money on these TPUs as the whole engineering cost has to be made back from its pricing on Google Cloud, where as with NVIDIA it can pay back its engineering costs via multiple mature channels (games, super computers, and multiple cloud providers.) I wonder which is higher, the cost for creating the TPUs in terms of engineering and manufacturing or the cost differential in terms of usage…

Furthermore, computer hardware is not static. Is this a real long term investment by Google?

If they do not continue to improve on process, they will fall behind in just a few years.

Re: Benchmarking Google’s new TPUv2

#7

Post by Mononokay »

bhouston wrote: post #4

It is hard for Google to make money on these TPUs as the whole engineering cost has to be made back from its pricing on Google Cloud, where as with NVIDIA it can pay back its engineering costs via multiple mature channels (games, super computers, and multiple cloud providers.) I wonder which is higher, the cost for creating the TPUs in terms of engineering and manufacturing or the cost differential in terms of usage…

There's no real need to worry about Google in the long term - nVidia can make back their money solely with their GPUs; Google probably made their expenses back this weekend with searches around the Olympics. It'd be pointless for them to not use their TPUs themselves, and their main product, Adsense, uses ML.

Re: Benchmarking Google’s new TPUv2

#8

Post by dkobran »

Just to clarify, is this benchmark leveraging mixed-precision mode on the Volta V100? The major innovation of the Volta generation is mixed-precision which NVIDIA claims is a huge performance increase over the Pascal generation (P100 in the case of your benchmark).

Link to NVIDIA documentation on mixed-precision TensorCores: https://devblogs.nvidia.com/inside-volta/

Re: Benchmarking Google’s new TPUv2

#9

Post by zitterbewegung »

angrygoat wrote: post #2

Google claim 29x better performance-per-Watt with TPUs than contemporary GPUs[0]. Interesting to contrast that to the images-per-$ figure in this post, which is more like 2x. I assume there's a high capital cost for this new hardware, but when they scale it up I wonder if the ratio of cost TPU to GPU will trend towards the ratio of power-per-Watt between the platforms? Seems like a natural limit, even if it never qui…

I think you might want to factor that they are adding their own fees? Also, I think the market may have changed since then (AWS lowered prices and new GPUs have come out). Google's workload is also different than the benchmark that is given in this.
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