Jim Keller has an interesting proposition on NVIDIA’s Blackwell GPUs, claiming that the agency ought to’ve utilized an alternate cost-efficient interconnect methodology.
Jim Keller Believes NVIDIA Might’ve Save Billion In R&D Prices On Blackwell GPU Structure
Properly, Tenstorrent’s CEO Jim Keller is understood for a few of *enjoyable* his takes on tech merchandise. Lately, he known as NVIDIA’s CUDA a swamp, too, so you possibly can think about how he pans out on social media. Jim has now criticized Crew Inexperienced’s R&D price range for his or her Blackwell GPUs, claiming that the corporate would’ve saved billions by merely altering the interconnect methodology. You may see it in his tweet on X beneath:
— Jim Keller (@jimkxa) April 11, 2024
By way of the Blackwell interconnect, NVIDIA has utilized their fifth Technology “NVLINK” interconnect expertise. Whereas NVLINK has vital benefits over different strategies when it comes to bandwidth, latency, and scalability, it lags on account of its “proprietary” nature, which might’t cater to some other producers’ {hardware}.
Furthermore, the utilization of NVLINK is claimed to be a high-cost transfer in business dynamics, which is why Jim Keller has criticized it, particularly since he promotes an “open-source” ideology for the markets, however NVLINK is the precise reverse right here.
Now, the choice, on this case, is Ethernet interconnect, which is a less expensive possibility and destroys the proprietary state of NVLINK, finally offering a a lot better ecosystem, however when it comes to the efficiency figures, Ethernet must do a take a look at catching as much as Crew Inexperienced’s NVLINK mixed with InfiniBand, however with UE (Extremely Ethernet) interconnect in the best way, issues might probably change right here, fueling the usual’s adoption, since UE ensures efficient AI and HPC efficiency. Nevertheless, it’s nonetheless within the growth part.
Jim Keller believes that NVIDIA’s whopping $10 billion R&D prices on Blackwell are an excessive amount of, and the corporate might have considerably decreased it by merely altering interconnect. Jim is understood to troll firms, particularly NVIDIA, a number of occasions, however his declare does sound viable to an extent, as Blackwell’s prices are merely outrageous.
However regardless of what chances are you’ll say about NVIDIA’s Blackwell AI GPU prices, there is not any doubt that the demand for these chips is sky-high & even firms reminiscent of Intel and AMD are having a tough time breaking NVIDIA’s dominance which has solely been accelerated with the announcement of Blackwell.
