golli

joined 2 years ago
[–] golli@lemm.ee 3 points 4 months ago

That's pretty much me aswell, besides that I didn't even spend energy to try and learn others. Simple docker compose, simple ui and easy way to add services.

I am sure there are alternatives that allow for more elaborate setups and fancier things. But for the low effort I put into it, I got a page with some nice buttons with appropriate icons that scales to whatever screen size it's displayed on. Only additional thing I did was enabled to show some basic info to see if e.g. SABnzbd is downloading something, which was also super easy.

[–] golli@lemm.ee 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

If we are talking the manufacturing side, rather than design/software i am very curious to see how SIMC develops. You are absolutely right that there is a big advantage for the second mover, since they can avoid dead ends and already know on an abstract level what is working. And diminishing returns also help make gaps be slightly less relevant.

However i think we can't just apply the same timeline to them and say "they have 7nm now" and it took others x years to progress from there to 5nm or 3nm, because these steps include the major shift from DUV to EUV, which was in the making for a very long time. And that's a whole different beast compared to DUV, where they are also probably still relying on ASML machines for the smallest nodes (although i think producing those domestically is much more feasible). Eventually they'll get there, but i think this isn't trivial and will take more than 2 years for sure.

On the design side vs Nvidia the hyperscalers like Alibaba/Tencent/Baidu or maybe even a smaller newcomer might be able to create something competitive for their specific usecases (like the Google TPUs). But Nvidia isn't standing still either, so i think getting close to parity will be extremely hard there aswell.


Of course, the price gap will shrink at the same rate as ROCm matures and customers feel its safe to use AMD hardware for training.

Well to what degree ROCm matures and closes the gap is probably the question. Like i said, i agree that their hardware seems quite capable in many ways, although my knowledge here is quite limited. But AMD so far hasn't really shown that they can compete with Nvidia on the software side.


As far as Intel goes, being slow in my reply helps my point. Just today Intel canceled their next-generation GPU Falcon Shore, making it an internal development step only. As much as i am rooting for them, it will need a major shift in culture and talent for them to right the ship. Gaudi 3 wasn't successful (i think they didn't even meet their target of $500mio sales) and now they probably don't have any release in 2025, assuming Jaguar Lake is 2026 since Falcon Shore was slated for end of this year. In my books that is the definition of being behind more than 1 year, considering they are not even close to parity right now.

[–] golli@lemm.ee 2 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Yeah. I don’t believe market value is a great indicator in this case. In general, I would say that capital markets are rational at a macro level, but not micro. This is all speculation/gambling.

I have to concede that point to some degree, since i guess i hold similar views with Tesla's value vs the rest of the automotive Industry. But i still think that the basic hirarchy holds true with nvidia being significantly ahead of the pack.

My guess is that AMD and Intel are at most 1 year behind Nvidia when it comes to tech stack. “China”, maybe 2 years, probably less.

Imo you are too optimistic with those estimations, particularly with Intel and China, although i am not an expert in the field.

As i see it AMD seems to have a quite decent product with their instinct cards in the server market on the hardware side, but they wish they'd have something even close to CUDA and its mindshare. Which would take years to replicate. Intel wish they were only a year behind Nvidia. And i'd like to comment on China, but tbh i have little to no knowledge of their state in GPU development. If they are "2 years, probably less" behind as you say, then they should have something like the rtx 4090, which was released end of 2022. But do they have something that even rivals the 2000 or 3000 series cards?

However, if you can make chips with 80% performance at 10% price, its a win. People can continue to tell themselves that big tech always will buy the latest and greatest whatever the cost. It does not make it true.

But the issue is they all make their chips at the same manufacturer, TSMC, even Intel in the case of their GPUs. So they can't really differentiate much on manufacturing costs and are also competing on the same limited supply. So no one can offer 80% of performance at 10% price, or even close to it. Additionally everything around the GPU (datacenters, rack space, power useage during operation etc.) also costs, so it is only part of the overall package cost and you also want to optimize for your limited space. As i understand it datacenter building and power delivery for them is actually another limiting factor right now for the hyperscalers.

Google, Meta and Amazon already make their own chips. That’s probably true for DeepSeek as well.

Google yes with their TPUs, but the others all use Nvidia or AMD chips to train. Amazon has their Graviton CPUs, which are quite competitive, but i don't think they have anything on the GPU side. DeepSeek is way to small and new for custom chips, they evolved out of a hedge fund and just use nvidia GPUs as more or less everyone else.

[–] golli@lemm.ee 2 points 5 months ago (4 children)

Looking at the market cap of Nvidia vs their competitors the market belives it is, considering they just lost more than AMD/Intel and the likes are worth combined and still are valued at $2.9 billion.

And with technology i mean both the performance of their hardware and the software stack they've created, which is a big part of their dominance.

[–] golli@lemm.ee 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I have to disagree with that, because this solution isn't free either.

Asking them to regulate their use requires them to build excess capacity purely for those peaks (so additional machinery), to have more inventory in stock, and depending on how manual labor intensive it is also means people have to work with a less reliable schedule. With some processes it might also simply not be able to regulate them up/down fast enough (or at all).

This problem is simply a function of whether it is cheaper to a) build excess capacity or b) build enough capacity to meet demand with steady production and add battery storage as needed.

Compared to most manufacturing lines battery tech is relatively simple tech, requries little to no human labor and still makes massive gains in price/performance. So my bet is that it'll be the cheaper solution.

That said it is of course not a binary thing and there might be some instances where we can optimize energy demand and supply, but i think in the industry those will happen naturally through market forces. However this won't be enough to smooth out the gap difference in the timing of supply/demand.

[–] golli@lemm.ee 28 points 5 months ago (7 children)

It’s a reaction to thinking China has better AI

I don't think this is the primary reason behind Nvidia's drop. Because as long as they got a massive technological lead it doesn't matter as much to them who has the best model, as long as these companies use their GPUs to train them.

The real change is that the compute resources (which is Nvidia's product) needed to create a great model suddenly fell of a cliff. Whereas until now the name of the game was that more is better and scale is everything.

China vs the West (or upstart vs big players) matters to those who are investing in creating those models. So for example Meta, who presumably spends a ton of money on high paying engineers and data centers, and somehow got upstaged by someone else with a fraction of their resources.

[–] golli@lemm.ee 1 points 5 months ago

I meant success in the context of what a dating app should achieve: Matching suitable partners.

But you are of course right that for the company success is profit and the rest are just variables to be optimized towards that goal.

[–] golli@lemm.ee 6 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Also regarding cost: I have yet to hear how a dating app solves the paradox that success means losing a customer. The incentives of the company and customer are not aligned and actually quite the opposite.

The company wants you to stay and spend as much as possible on the platform (optimizing to keep you just engaged enough to stick with it), whereas the ideal outcome for the customer means not needing the app in as little time as possible.

[–] golli@lemm.ee 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

Wikipedia on rooting.

Rooting is the process by which users of Android devices can attain privileged control (known as root access) over various subsystems of the device, usually smartphones and tablets

You can install apps from other sources without root access on Android. But some may need those extra permissions to function.

[–] golli@lemm.ee 6 points 6 months ago (2 children)

To play devil's advocate they probably aren't just doing it to gain favor, but also to avoid harm.

Trump is definitely petty enough to hold a grudge and go after whoever doesn't cozy up to him.

[–] golli@lemm.ee 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Yep, that's pretty much the gist of it. Driver overhead isn't something completely new, but with the B580 it certainly is so high that it becomes a massive problem in exactly the use case where it would make the most sense.


Another albeit smaller issue is the idle power draw. Here is a chart (taken from this article)

Because for a honest value evaluation that also plays a role, especially for anyone planning to use the card for a long time. Peak power draw doesn't matter as much imo, since most of us will not push their system to its limit for a majority of the time. But idle power draw does add up over time. It also imo kind of kills it as a product for the second niche use besides budget oriented games, which would be for use in a homelab setting for stuff like video transcoding.


So as much as i am honestly rooting for Intel and think they are actually making really good progress in entering such a difficult market, this isn't it yet. Maybe third time's the charm.

[–] golli@lemm.ee 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

I never really understood the purpose of the XPS line anyway.

The issue here is that you are comparing it to their business lineup, while it was a consumer product.

Dell XPS ("Extreme Performance System") is a line of consumer-oriented laptop and desktop computers manufactured by Dell since 1993.

My understanding is that it was their premium consumer line sitting above the more entry level Inspiron line.

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