Nvidia R&D chief on how AI is improving chip design
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Re: Nvidia R&D chief on how AI is improving chip design
#2Did nvidia just promise us singularity? :)
Hard to read a talk like this from a pulpit & not see shout outs to the incredibly super-fantastic open-source innovative projects like OpenROAD which have been shipping amazingly well-routed-by-AI chips for a while now. There's papers you can cite, galore, many open source designs[1].
It's not like Nvidia is promising anyone else will benefit from this work. This seems to be very high level coverage their R&D department is looking at, perhaps/perhaps not using. The article makes it hard to find out what is available, what has been published or otherwise deeply discussed (which is I think the best we can hope from Nvidia not real participation). There's only one paper linked, on NVCell[2], described as:
> The first is a system we have called NVCell, which uses a combination of simulated annealing and reinforcement learning to basically design our standard cell library.
This just feels like so much else going on in computing. WSL coming to windows, the recent Unity vs Unreal topic[3]. It's hard to imagine refusing to participate with others. It's hard to imagine not being part of the open source community working shoulder to shoulder to push for better. NVidia patently doesn't get it, patently isn't participating, patently isn't there. It's cool we can hear what they are up to, but it's also extremely NVidia that they're doing it all on their own. Anyhow, Looking forward to more AI based chip power system design starting to emerge; that sounds like a good idea NV.
[1] https://theopenroadproject.org/
[2] https://research.nvidia.com/publication/2021-12_nvcell-stand...
[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31064552 (412 points, 3 days ago, 311 comments)
Re: Nvidia R&D chief on how AI is improving chip design
#3Did nvidia just promise us singularity? :) Hard to read a talk like this from a pulpit & not see shout outs to the incredibly super-fantastic open-source innovative projects like OpenROAD which have been shipping amazingly well-routed-by-AI chips for a while now. There's papers you can cite, galore, many open source designs[1]. It's not like Nvidia is promising anyone else will benefit from this work. This seems to b…
> but it's also extremely NVidia that they're doing it all on their own.
Having a lead in chip design is their literal bread and butter. I think it's extremely "publicly traded company" more than "NVidia". Do you have an example of a company releasing an open source version of their secret sauce (foundation of their profits)?
Re: Nvidia R&D chief on how AI is improving chip design
#4Did nvidia just promise us singularity? :) Hard to read a talk like this from a pulpit & not see shout outs to the incredibly super-fantastic open-source innovative projects like OpenROAD which have been shipping amazingly well-routed-by-AI chips for a while now. There's papers you can cite, galore, many open source designs[1]. It's not like Nvidia is promising anyone else will benefit from this work. This seems to b…
> but it's also extremely NVidia that they're doing it all on their own. Having a lead in chip design is their literal bread and butter. I think it's extremely "publicly traded company" more than "NVidia". Do you have an example of a company releasing an open source version of their secret sauce (foundation of their profits)?
Netscape.
Worked out great for them /s (albeit writing was already on the wall for them by that point.)
Re: Nvidia R&D chief on how AI is improving chip design
#5Did nvidia just promise us singularity? :) Hard to read a talk like this from a pulpit & not see shout outs to the incredibly super-fantastic open-source innovative projects like OpenROAD which have been shipping amazingly well-routed-by-AI chips for a while now. There's papers you can cite, galore, many open source designs[1]. It's not like Nvidia is promising anyone else will benefit from this work. This seems to b…
> but it's also extremely NVidia that they're doing it all on their own. Having a lead in chip design is their literal bread and butter. I think it's extremely "publicly traded company" more than "NVidia". Do you have an example of a company releasing an open source version of their secret sauce (foundation of their profits)?
> Do you have an example of a company releasing an open source version of their secret sauce?
The chip design itself should be the secret sauce. Not the tools you make the chip with. Nvidia is resolutely not-contributing. Many other companies are starting to get onboard with open chip design. This doesn't mean the chips have to be open, but the tooling needs to be something shared & co-developable. If this is a little pet research project that's one thing, but there really needs to be ongoing workforce development, a strong advance. The NSF's TILOS, a strong alliance/nexus of researchers within & around the OpenROAD community, get this[1]:
> TILOS – The Institute for Learning-enabled Optimization at Scale – is an NSF National AI Research Institute for advances in optimization, partially supported by Intel Corporation. The institute began operations in November 2021 with a mission to "make impossible optimizations possible, at scale and in practice".
> There are six universities in TILOS: UCSD, MIT, National University, Penn, UT-Austin, and Yale. The institute seeks a new nexus of AI and machine learning, optimization, and use in practice. Figure 4 shows four virtuous cycles envisioned for the institute: 1. mutual advances of AI and optimization provide the foundations; 2. challenges of scale, along with breakthroughs from scaling, bind together foundations and the use domains of chip design, networks and robotics; 3. the cycle of translation and impact brings research and the leading edge of practice closer together; and 4. the cycle of research, education, and broadening participation grows the field and its workforce.
The virtues written here are self evident & obvious. Trying to just get good yourself without trying to help advance the field, not participating, not taking advantages of scale of many working together, not participating in open research, the risks of having isolated teams, and not participating in cycles of development: whatever the nvidia or "publicly traded company" worlds think they're doing, they're missing out, and hurting everyone and especially themselves for this oldschool zero-sum competitive thinking.
There are plenty of company's releasing the chips too. Google's OpenTitan[2] security chip. WD's Swerv RISC-V core for their driver controller ARM R-series replacement[3]. Open standards if not chips like UCI for chiplets or CXL for interconnect are again examples of literally everyone but NVidia playing well together, trying for better, standardizing a future for participation & healthy competition & growth. Nvidia again and again is the company which simply will not play with others.
I challenge you to answer your own question in reverse: are any companies other than Nvidia embarking up AI/ML chipmaking in a closed fashion? There probably are, let's follow & watch them.
[1] https://theopenroadproject.org/news/leveling-up-a-trajectory...
Re: Nvidia R&D chief on how AI is improving chip design
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
> but it's also extremely NVidia that they're doing it all on their own. Having a lead in chip design is their literal bread and butter. I think it's extremely "publicly traded company" more than "NVidia". Do you have an example of a company releasing an open source version of their secret sauce (foundation of their profits)?
> Do you have an example of a company releasing an open source version of their secret sauce? The chip design itself should be the secret sauce. Not the tools you make the chip with. Nvidia is resolutely not-contributing. Many other companies are starting to get onboard with open chip design. This doesn't mean the chips have to be open, but the tooling needs to be something shared & co-developable. If this is a littl…
If the tools to make it would more easily allow others to achieve similarly efficient designs, then that is the secret sauce...
Re: Nvidia R&D chief on how AI is improving chip design
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
> but it's also extremely NVidia that they're doing it all on their own. Having a lead in chip design is their literal bread and butter. I think it's extremely "publicly traded company" more than "NVidia". Do you have an example of a company releasing an open source version of their secret sauce (foundation of their profits)?
> Do you have an example of a company releasing an open source version of their secret sauce? The chip design itself should be the secret sauce. Not the tools you make the chip with. Nvidia is resolutely not-contributing. Many other companies are starting to get onboard with open chip design. This doesn't mean the chips have to be open, but the tooling needs to be something shared & co-developable. If this is a littl…
So intel, TSMC and Samsung have open-sourced their chip manufacturing systems I did not know that. ASML is giving out lithography systems so anyone can make them.
Re: Nvidia R&D chief on how AI is improving chip design
#8Did nvidia just promise us singularity? :) Hard to read a talk like this from a pulpit & not see shout outs to the incredibly super-fantastic open-source innovative projects like OpenROAD which have been shipping amazingly well-routed-by-AI chips for a while now. There's papers you can cite, galore, many open source designs[1]. It's not like Nvidia is promising anyone else will benefit from this work. This seems to b…
That article doesn't actually have enough data to really know. The anecdotes are all just design assist, make things faster from 20 mins to 3 seconds. Not singularity. There are teasers but nothing clear singularity. I think the big problem is they are just using it for fuzzy algorithm optimization, which is clearly not self learning.
Re: Nvidia R&D chief on how AI is improving chip design
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
> but it's also extremely NVidia that they're doing it all on their own. Having a lead in chip design is their literal bread and butter. I think it's extremely "publicly traded company" more than "NVidia". Do you have an example of a company releasing an open source version of their secret sauce (foundation of their profits)?
> Do you have an example of a company releasing an open source version of their secret sauce? The chip design itself should be the secret sauce. Not the tools you make the chip with. Nvidia is resolutely not-contributing. Many other companies are starting to get onboard with open chip design. This doesn't mean the chips have to be open, but the tooling needs to be something shared & co-developable. If this is a littl…
> The chip design itself should be the secret sauce. Not the tools you make the chip with.
I’m sure Cadence, Synopsys, and Mentor would love to hear more about this.
Re: Nvidia R&D chief on how AI is improving chip design
#10What is extremely telling is what is missing ... Design Rule Checking (DRC) and Layout Vs Schematic (LVS).
These require:
1) Longer bit length arithmetic
32-bit float simply isn't enough. 64-bit float is close, but limited. You really want 128-bit integer. And nVidia isn't delivering that.
2) Real algorithmic improvements
We're still stuck with computational geometry algorithms that don't parallelize. It would be awfully useful if nVidia would actually research some new algorithms instead of just waving around the ML/AI marketing wand.
But, then, this is the company that built itself on benchmarketing, so ...