News Jim Keller suggests Nvidia should have used Ethernet to stitch together Blackwell GPUs — Nvidia could have saved billions

[bit_user]

No. And back when NVLink was developed, Ethernet was still limited to 10 Gigabit (the 25 Gigabit alliance had not even formed yet)

Not even remotely true! NVLink was first announced in 2014. IEEE 802.3ba (40G & 100G Ethernet) dates all the way back to 2010!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.3
​

and lacked the latency and coherency requirements for inter-chip communication.

This is the key point. NVLink is a lower-layer protocol more suited to what Nvidia wanted, which was a scalable, cache-coherent, shared-memory fabric.

Blackwell NVLink supports 1.8TBps. Is there an Ethernet equivalent to 14.4Tbps?

You're comparing aggregate throughput (i.e. summation over all links) with single-link Ethernet speeds. Blackwell has 18 links and Nvidia likes to sum the data in each direction (although Ethernet and PCIe are also full-duplex and usually not rated that way). So, it's 50 GB/s per link per direction, or 400 Gbps.

Yes, there is actually a standard for 400 Gbps Ethernet, and the study group for it was founded all the way back in 2013, FWIW. Plenty more details, here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terabit_Ethernet
​

 

[bit_user]

I wish Jim Keller's Tenstorrent instead focused on getting their rumoured "Ascalon" RISC-V CPU core out the door to consumers. If it is as good as they say, it should be competitive with Intel, AMD, Apple and Qualcomm, and we need good competition and diversity in the CPU space.

They have announced IP licensing deals involving it. They're not (currently) trying to get into the general-purpose CPU race, however.

 

[DiegoSynth]

Nobody is forcing you to use CUDA on NVIDIA hardware -- it's a value-add for customers (and a great value at that). People can dis it and hate it but that's all sour grapes talk.

I feel like people today want everything someone else invents, designs, makes, and markets for free. Not only that, but they also want to dictate what others will support and how much they will charge for it.

Case in point -- Epic games lawsuit against Apple.

TL;DR version of that case -- Epic wants the benefits of:

- Well designed developed, and documented software platform
- Good distribution system
- Large user base with a lot of money
- Great visibility

But they don't want to pay a dime to Apple for any of that.

Nobody ever answered a straight question "if you don't agree 30% is fair, how much do you think it should be?" (not counting answers of 3% which is just card processing fees which don't cover the cost of iOS maintenance and development, store curation, notarization, digital distribution, not to mention all the free apps whose distribution has to be sponsored somehow).

Same thing is happening here with CUDA -- NVIDIA has poured a metric sh*t-ton of money and developer hours into creating CUDA to benefit customers using their hardware just like Apple did with iOS and app store to make the hardware (a phone) more appealing.

To top it off, both companies have solid if not great developer support and developers are naturally drawn to that. To try to ascribe malice to someone offering a well rounded product is asinine.

But NVIDIA IS more competitive. They offer more value for money. If I have to pay the same for top of the line AMD and NVIDIA card I am getting NVIDIA because I am getting CUDA, NPP library, NVJPEG library, NVIDIA Video SDK, Iray support, Physx, Visual Studio integration, performance profiler software, etc, etc. The fact that you don't care about those things doesn't make AMD a better deal just because they use and/or favor open-source.

For AMD, software and developer support wasn't even an afterthought -- they were primarily a hardware company. While they were selling Athlon chips Intel was working on their own C++ compiler and performance libraries. People were poking fun at Northwood and Prescott, yet those chips were used in professional settings (medical, etc) and were giving great performance with properly optimized software. Developers like me were writing optimized code for Intel, not for AMD because AMD didn't care about software at all. Their mantra was "with our CPU you don't need to optimize software" and that created a toxic mindset in the software industry, undoing of which took years.

Same goes for ATI -- Radeons were competitive with NVIDIA hardware of the time, but drivers and developer support were atrocious. Only now they are doing what NVIDIA is doing, but now they aren't first and it's too little, too late.

So basically you are praising those competitors for socializing the costs and privatizing the profits through leeching from open-source instead of investing their own money into development of a superior product?

You definitely had too much of something, and Jim Keller seems to have the same supplier.

Yes there is, it's because he's apparently barking mad yet the press is singing odes to him as if he is at the minimum the second coming of Christ.

Why nobody ever mentions say Richard Sites or Rich Witek who made considerably more significant contributions than Jim Keller can ever hope is beyond me. Given his reckless statements Jim Keller looks more and more like a techbro instead of a serious engineer and techbros are associated in my head mostly with fraud, grift, and attention seeking.

What you say is true, but you cannot just slice a part of it like this.

If you look at the whole picture, the problem comes with the products: software need to work in all the platforms, nvidia, amd, intel, etc. That means that developers need to learn and write the code adapted for each one of them. That means that at the end of the day You and Me both get a huge bloated, unperformant, dated piece of software. Instead of innovating, developers have to invest their time and money in adapting the same stuff to the different brands (that's why Ray Tracing has gone nowhere in the last 6 years or so).
That, or just a very selected group of people gets render 3d, or whichever task, competively.

It's logical and fine to protect your technology and not present it to the competition. But after you sold enough, you received what you deserved and you moved on; if your product is compromising EVERYTHING around you, then that's not ok anymore.

So in short: we are the ones affected regarding money, time, access, and quality.

 

[CmdrShepard]

All Epic wants is #3, the large user base.

Even if that were true (which it isn't as their demands from the suit against Google clearly show), that user base is there because of Apple's (and Google's) R&D efforts and spending. It didn't materialize overnight and it wasn't free to build -- on the contrary it took considerable investment and commitment.

That you believe access to those respective user bases should be "free for all" without other companies having to pay a cent for it tells me everything about your beliefs regarding "free markets" -- it seems to boil down to "I want to be free to do whatever I want in the ecosystem you built and you are maintaining" and aligns with what Epic is asking for in court.

A side-loaded Epic Store can run on basically any platform (and is ultimately intended to do so), is its own distribution system, and only has the visibility it itself is able to get by encouraging iPhone users to side-load the store.

That's exactly what I am afraid of -- that this alternate distribution system will run around Apple's privacy and security controls. It's a foot in the door approach aimed at dismantling the last product where users have any say about who has access to their data.

Now if you're just talking about the games that Epic distributes over the Apple Store, then Epic does pay Apple through direct app purchases. But once Epic (not Apple, re: your "and markets for free" above) has convinced the user to download the games, then for all in-app purchases Apple is adding no additional value.

You are looking at it from the wrong end.

Apple is adding value to the real customer (buyer of the phone) -- they handle all in-app purchases with support for limits for child accounts, process all the disputes and refunds themselves so everything is convenient and in one place. I understand that some people don't care about having dozens of different places where they have to handle their finances but I for one appreciate the simplicity and reliability enough to pay more for having it.

Hobson's choice is not a free market. If you believe in monopolies beyond IP rights then that is your right, but you can't expect people in countries with free market laws to just accept your statements as to what should be the case. If Apple doesn't like functioning in a free market state then it can choose to do its business elsewhere.

You keep talking about "free market", but on the other hand you are asking for regulation because you don't like the state your "free market" is in right now. So, you either didn't (and don't) have a "free market" and all this talk about it is a bunch of hot air, or you won't have it anymore once it is regulated.

 

[CmdrShepard]

If you look at the whole picture, the problem comes with the products: software need to work in all the platforms, nvidia, amd, intel, etc. That means that developers need to learn and write the code adapted for each one of them.

Writing this code for different platforms nowadays is so high-level and abstracted from the hardware that you are mostly calling different sets of APIs.

For example, your 3D rendering app can use either NVIDIA Iray, or, Radeon Rays, or Intel Embree. In all 3 cases, the library is going to do the optimized stuff for you under the hood.

Instead of innovating, developers have to invest their time and money in adapting the same stuff to the different brands (that's why Ray Tracing has gone nowhere in the last 6 years or so).

Today's developers are long past the "innovating" phase -- most of them just use whatever libraries they can find that get the job done with minimal integration effort on their end so that their software can tick as many boxes as possible.

Regarding ray-tracing (for apps, not for games) see above.

But after you sold enough...

The trouble is, who decides what's enough?

if your product is compromising EVERYTHING around you, then that's not ok anymore.

I don't understand this part, you'll have to be more specific. What is NVIDIA CUDA compromising? Or Apple's app store?

Except perhaps Jim Keller's and Epic's ability to rake in free money on someone else's hard work? I don't have a problem with that because I dislike and distrust both of those entities.

So in short: we are the ones affected regarding money, time, access, and quality.

I disagree with that.

I am buying what I want and if it weren't for Epic Game Store on PC, I would've also been able to buy where I want, but they are making exclusive deals which block games from being sold on other PC stores like Steam and GOG so I can't.

If anything, they are limiting my access and reducing the quality of games by promoting quick cash grabs through those exclusives by game development studios. Not to mention that the games in EGS aren't cheaper than in other stores.

 

[ezst036]

Apple is adding value to the real customer (buyer of the phone) -- they handle all in-app purchases with support for limits for child accounts, process all the disputes and refunds themselves so everything is convenient and in one place. I understand that some people don't care about having dozens of different places where they have to handle their finances but I for one appreciate the simplicity and reliability enough to pay more for having it.

The problem is Apple doesn't add nearly as much value as what they take, nor as much as you suggest. Their claims are overrated. So are Epic's, for that matter. You talk of what "Apple has invested" or what "Epic has invested", "Nvidia's investment", etc, well what about what the user has invested? This is not so simple as "The user invested thirty five dollars and sixty two cents at retail". There's both time investment as well as (for some) those who become more hardcore devotees and fans, and also corporate clients who service their own needs internally or other customers of theirs serviced externally that again, isn't just as simple as a dollar amount raked in by the parent(such as Nvidia, Apple, etc).

I can't imagine what Star Wars would be today if it were tied exclusively and aggressively only to VHS. That is in a way what these companies represent with the vendor-lock-in strategy.

Apple and Epic, and to come back to Nvidia, diminish their own value through aggression. What happens at the end? You're not factoring in the end. You don't just get to say "Apple invested development costs", then add in "current maintenance costs" as if that's it and only Nvidia has costs associated with CUDA. That is not it, that is not the end.

What happens when Nvidia moves on? All their customers are SOL. All that value, all that time, all that effort they put in? Nvidia gets to say, now it's over. We decide. We, Nvidia, decided. Oh, you bought in? - You don't get to decide! It's over. We decide. Yeah, you were a customer, but ehhh. Bye. Oh, you need.... ? bye. Oh, you had...... ? bye. Oh, you want.....? bye. Oh, so now what are you supposed to do? bye. Purchase a new product. Don't forget to purchase Nvidia.

Call what Nvidia does and what Apple does and what Epic will do "planned obsolescence", call it "vendor-lock in", call it what you want. It has several names and several variations, but many, many, many victims. I'm one of them which is why it motivates my thoughts. The cost of lock-in and obsolescence is a very deep cost that I always evaluate ahead of time.

You have unfairly left this cost out of your calculations.

 

[slightnitpick]

Even if that were true (which it isn't as their demands from the suit against Google clearly show), that user base is there because of Apple's (and Google's) R&D efforts and spending. It didn't materialize overnight and it wasn't free to build -- on the contrary it took considerable investment and commitment.

That you believe access to those respective user bases should be "free for all" without other companies having to pay a cent for it tells me everything about your beliefs regarding "free markets" -- it seems to boil down to "I want to be free to do whatever I want in the ecosystem you built and you are maintaining" and aligns with what Epic is asking for in court.

No, what I believe about free markets is that end purchasers, aka the "user base", should be free from contractual constraint from those they purchased from. The first sale doctrine, right-to-repair, et cetera should apply to every purchase, and end users should be free from all IP constraints in modifying the product they have purchased. The free market requires that third parties and middlemen should not be able to interfere with transactions (beyond laws and regulations). And in a transaction between Epic games and an owner of an Apple product, Apple should have no power to constrain such a transaction.

That's exactly what I am afraid of -- that this alternate distribution system will run around Apple's privacy and security controls. It's a foot in the door approach aimed at dismantling the last product where users have any say about who has access to their data.

Giving the users power over their purchases will indeed result in mistakes. But if the user chooses to "run around Apple's privacy and security controls", that should be their choice to make. And you're forgetting so far niche products like Pinephone, Graphene OS, or Sailfish OS, some of which are completely oriented around user control (versus joint user/Apple control) of user data.

You are looking at it from the wrong end.

Apple is adding value to the real customer (buyer of the phone)

If this is not something a customer wants then a customer should be able to remove this "value".

I understand that some people don't care about having dozens of different places where they have to handle their finances but I for one appreciate the simplicity and reliability enough to pay more for having it.

None of this would force you to get rid of this on your own personal devices. Indeed, a free market would just as easily empower you to keep it as to get rid of it.

You keep talking about "free market", but on the other hand you are asking for regulation because you don't like the state your "free market" is in right now. So, you either didn't (and don't) have a "free market" and all this talk about it is a bunch of hot air, or you won't have it anymore once it is regulated.

We lost a "free market" when laws enabled large corporations to form, and then other laws enabled them to contractually violate pre-existing rights through the contract terms. We do still have the ideal of the "free market", and it is this ideal that you're arguing against. Sorry, but for those who were raised on the ideal of a free market (or democracy, or whatever your -ism of choice is) your argument isn't going to fly.

I don't understand why you think anyone should prefer a system in which their choices are constrained by non-governmental third parties. A system in which companies can sell a person a product but then still claim ownership of it.

I am buying what I want and if it weren't for Epic Game Store on PC, I would've also been able to buy where I want, but they are making exclusive deals which block games from being sold on other PC stores like Steam and GOG so I can't.

So you're saying they have to sell everywhere. How does that work with your idea of companies being allowed to control access to their software and user bases?

 

[slightnitpick]

You keep talking about "free market", but on the other hand you are asking for regulation because you don't like the state your "free market" is in right now. So, you either didn't (and don't) have a "free market" and all this talk about it is a bunch of hot air, or you won't have it anymore once it is regulated.

We lost a "free market" when laws enabled large corporations to form, and then other laws enabled them to contractually violate pre-existing rights through the contract terms.

To cite Wikipedia on this point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limitations_on_exclusive_rights:_Computer_programs

The revisions recommended by CONTU were approved with one important change. Instead of "rightful possessor" of a computer program Congress used the word "owner" of a computer program. It is not clear why this change was made.[1] This one change resulted in a state of affairs in which software vendors began to take the position that customers do not own their software but rather only "license" it. The courts have split on whether the assertion in software agreements that the customer does not own the software, and has only a right to use it in accordance with the license agreement, is legally enforceable.[2]

Thanks to this corporate redefinition of ownership, Apple can remove your apps at will, or at the very least prevent you from moving them to another phone. And this doesn't seem to be what the US congress initially intended with this user rights law.

And this seems to be appropriate to as to the pre-existing state of laws allowing circumvention of lockdown of computer systems against third-party sellers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_v._Accolade
Console makers typically didn't make money from sale of the console at the time, and if they did make any profit it wasn't nearly the profit Apple makes from an iPhone.

Despite claims from Sega's attorneys that the company had invested much time and effort into developing the Genesis, and that Accolade was capitalizing on this time and energy, the court rejected these claims by noting that U.S. Supreme Court in Feist v. Rural Publications had unequivocally rejected the notion that copyright protection could be based on the "sweat of the brow," i.e., that a work was entitled to copyright because of the amount of effort it took to create it.

I want to retain this market state.

 

[hsv-compass]

Not even remotely true! NVLink was first announced in 2014. IEEE 802.3ba (40G & 100G Ethernet) dates all the way back to 2010!

​

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.3​

​

This is the key point. NVLink is a lower-layer protocol more suited to what Nvidia wanted, which was a scalable, cache-coherent, shared-memory fabric.


You're comparing aggregate throughput (i.e. summation over all links) with single-link Ethernet speeds. Blackwell has 18 links and Nvidia likes to sum the data in each direction (although Ethernet and PCIe are also full-duplex and usually not rated that way). So, it's 50 GB/s per link per direction, or 400 Gbps.

Yes, there is actually a standard for 400 Gbps Ethernet, and the study group for it was founded all the way back in 2013, FWIW. Plenty more details, here:

​

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terabit_Ethernet​

Nvlink, Ethernet, pcie switched fabric, pcie switch (CXL), IB. You can use any in these in a system these days. Ethernet latency is 10-100x. Why use?

 

[JTWrenn]

Nobody is forcing you to use CUDA on NVIDIA hardware -- it's a value-add for customers (and a great value at that). People can dis it and hate it but that's all sour grapes talk.

I feel like people today want everything someone else invents, designs, makes, and markets for free. Not only that, but they also want to dictate what others will support and how much they will charge for it.

Case in point -- Epic games lawsuit against Apple.

TL;DR version of that case -- Epic wants the benefits of:

- Well designed developed, and documented software platform
- Good distribution system
- Large user base with a lot of money
- Great visibility

But they don't want to pay a dime to Apple for any of that.

Nobody ever answered a straight question "if you don't agree 30% is fair, how much do you think it should be?" (not counting answers of 3% which is just card processing fees which don't cover the cost of iOS maintenance and development, store curation, notarization, digital distribution, not to mention all the free apps whose distribution has to be sponsored somehow).

Same thing is happening here with CUDA -- NVIDIA has poured a metric sh*t-ton of money and developer hours into creating CUDA to benefit customers using their hardware just like Apple did with iOS and app store to make the hardware (a phone) more appealing.

To top it off, both companies have solid if not great developer support and developers are naturally drawn to that. To try to ascribe malice to someone offering a well rounded product is asinine.

But NVIDIA IS more competitive. They offer more value for money. If I have to pay the same for top of the line AMD and NVIDIA card I am getting NVIDIA because I am getting CUDA, NPP library, NVJPEG library, NVIDIA Video SDK, Iray support, Physx, Visual Studio integration, performance profiler software, etc, etc. The fact that you don't care about those things doesn't make AMD a better deal just because they use and/or favor open-source.

For AMD, software and developer support wasn't even an afterthought -- they were primarily a hardware company. While they were selling Athlon chips Intel was working on their own C++ compiler and performance libraries. People were poking fun at Northwood and Prescott, yet those chips were used in professional settings (medical, etc) and were giving great performance with properly optimized software. Developers like me were writing optimized code for Intel, not for AMD because AMD didn't care about software at all. Their mantra was "with our CPU you don't need to optimize software" and that created a toxic mindset in the software industry, undoing of which took years.

Same goes for ATI -- Radeons were competitive with NVIDIA hardware of the time, but drivers and developer support were atrocious. Only now they are doing what NVIDIA is doing, but now they aren't first and it's too little, too late.

So basically you are praising those competitors for socializing the costs and privatizing the profits through leeching from open-source instead of investing their own money into development of a superior product?

You definitely had too much of something, and Jim Keller seems to have the same supplier.

Yes there is, it's because he's apparently barking mad yet the press is singing odes to him as if he is at the minimum the second coming of Christ.

Why nobody ever mentions say Richard Sites or Rich Witek who made considerably more significant contributions than Jim Keller can ever hope is beyond me. Given his reckless statements Jim Keller looks more and more like a techbro instead of a serious engineer and techbros are associated in my head mostly with fraud, grift, and attention seeking.

You appear to be pro monopoly and pro monopoly power. That to me is anti freedom. I think you should do a bit of reading about how bad these giant corps really are for society.

 

[bit_user]

Ethernet latency is 10-100x. Why use?

Not that I don't believe it's higher-latency, but I'm curious how you figure that. For large payloads, I think the latency should be even less than that figure. Remember, we're not talking about twisted-pair.

For an architecture like Tenstorrent's, they primarily view it as a dataflow problem. Throughput isn't limited by latency, so long as it's all feed-forward. The benefit he gave was lower development costs (i.e. probably due to the availability of off-the-self IP and silicon, instead of having to design & validate it yourself).

 

[sitehostplus]

Makes me wonder how much stock he owns in some ethernet company he could have made money off of.

 

[bit_user]

Makes me wonder how much stock he owns in some ethernet company he could have made money off of.

He's CEO of Tenstorrent - a company that makes AI chips aspiring to compete with Nvidia. Their Wormhole architecture is based on 100 Gb Ethernet:

Source: https://www.semianalysis.com/p/tenstorrent-wormhole-analysis-a-scale
​

 

[CmdrShepard]

The problem is Apple doesn't add nearly as much value as what they take, nor as much as you suggest.

We can agree to disagree on this one -- for me they add enough value to justify higher prices.

On the other hand, prices of premium phone models have all but equalized in the past couple of years so Apple isn't that much more expensive as it was before (I'd say Samsung is price-matching it pretty good) meaning the added value is even better now that a high-end Samsung phone costs the same as a high-end iPhone.

You talk of what "Apple has invested" or what "Epic has invested", "Nvidia's investment", etc, well what about what the user has invested?

The user has invested the price of a phone to get said phone together with a specific end-user experience. The user is paying for WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) with absolutely no risk involved. It's an informed decision to buy into the system because there are other options out there.

The company making said phone has invested in hardware and software design and validation, custom tooling, material sourcing, manufacturing, packaging, transportation, distribution, retail, marketing,.. I could go on but I hope you get the point.

All of their investment was based on a premise that the well-rounded product consisting of said phone and value-added services will be bought by the user. You can't even compare the amount of investment and risk factor, at least not with a straight face.

There's both time investment as well as (for some) those who become more hardcore devotees and fans, and also corporate clients who service their own needs internally or other customers of theirs serviced externally that again, isn't just as simple as a dollar amount raked in by the parent(such as Nvidia, Apple, etc).

I am having trouble parsing this statement due to unmatched parentheses, but what I am getting from it is that you are vastly over-simplifying the "raking in" process -- as in, dismissing every step that had to (and still has to) be done to get to that point where you are "raking in" money from customers.

On the other hand you seem to ascribe more importance (as self-entitled people often do) to personal "investment" than it is actually warranted. Try looking past your emotional response of "but I also sunk my free time into this and I deserve more / better" instead of trying to rationalize it, and then we can discuss the topic further.

I can't imagine what Star Wars would be today if it were tied exclusively and aggressively only to VHS. That is in a way what these companies represent with the vendor-lock-in strategy.

That's a dumb comparison if I ever saw one and here's why:

1. DVD was objectively better distribution format (better image quality with no degradation)
2. You had to pay again to own a new copy on DVD

In contrast, another app store on iOS doesn't bring any benefits -- you don't get better app quality, you don't even get better service or better app prices. If you want to own an app in this new app store (assuming it's even listed) you have to pay for it again and you won't get a better quality app. So unlike VHS to DVD you are only getting downsides.

Apple and Epic, and to come back to Nvidia, diminish their own value through aggression.

I keep hearing this and I can't really take it seriously. Is there someone holding you at a gunpoint to buy an iPhone or an NVIDIA card? No? Then why the f*ck you are complaining about aggression?

There are so many people nowadays saying things "I would use product A if it had features X, Y, and Z". Like, who cares? If you don't like it, don't use it. Use whatever you want instead of attention whoring and trying to force the company making product A to sacrifice a part of their own user base catering to you and your special needs.

If you really want something you can adapt your use case and make it work with what's available instead of being an entitled brat who whines and demands that companies do this or that.

What happens when Nvidia moves on?

The chance of NVIDIA doing that is way smaller than a chance that all the people clamoring about CUDA being a monopoly are a bunch of entitled and self-centered liars, hypocrites, and attention whores.

All their customers are SOL. All that value, all that time, all that effort they put in? Nvidia gets to say, now it's over.

Actually they don't. There are laws in place to prevent that from happening.

It has several names and several variations, but many, many, many victims. I'm one of them which is why it motivates my thoughts.

"Show us on this doll where the big bad NVIDIA has touched you."

Citation needed.

The cost of lock-in and obsolescence is a very deep cost that I always evaluate ahead of time.

You have unfairly left this cost out of your calculations.

No I haven't. There is always such a cost even in the most free and open systems.

For example, if you choose Linux as a host OS for your hardware device you will sink time and effort into hiring Linux developers, writing drivers for your hardware, etc. If, for whatever reason, you have to switch from Linux to Windows all that effort is wasted just as if it was the other way around (going from Windows to Linux).

The crux is -- you are making an informed decision. Since nobody can see the future, you are doing it on a best-effort basis with whatever information you have at the time and hoping for the best outcome.

Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, but it is unreasonable to expect that your choices never have any negative consequences for you. If you do expect that, then you are delusional and you should really seek professional help.

 

[sitehostplus]

He's CEO of Tenstorrent - a company that makes AI chips aspiring to compete with Nvidia. Their Wormhole architecture is based on 100 Gb Ethernet:

​

​

​

​

Source: https://www.semianalysis.com/p/tenstorrent-wormhole-analysis-a-scale​

​

So, basically, he wants to make money selling Nvidia the tech. 😁

 

[CmdrShepard]

No, what I believe about free markets is that end purchasers, aka the "user base", should be free from contractual constraint from those they purchased from. The first sale doctrine, right-to-repair, et cetera should apply to every purchase, and end users should be free from all IP constraints in modifying the product they have purchased.

That's a fully irrational, entitled, and absolutist liberal view which totally ignores the amount of gullible or otherwise challenged people who might end up taken advantage of or physically hurt (or worse) if there were no restrictions on what end users can do with the products they buy.

It also ignores all the brand damage that would ensue by selling second-hand devices which were poorly repaired or modified.

The free market requires that third parties and middlemen should not be able to interfere with transactions (beyond laws and regulations). And in a transaction between Epic games and an owner of an Apple product, Apple should have no power to constrain such a transaction.

Apple should definitely have that power because I as an owner of the phone my (hypothetical) kid is using want to be able to control their spending on in-game purchases until they are of legal age to make their own decisions using their own money.

Giving the users power over their purchases will indeed result in mistakes. But if the user chooses to "run around Apple's privacy and security controls", that should be their choice to make.

And if it wasn't for social engineering and a lot of gullible people you would be right. The way it is, you can't just put your own desires over their well-being unless you are a sociopath and a narcissist.

And you're forgetting so far niche products like Pinephone, Graphene OS, or Sailfish OS, some of which are completely oriented around user control (versus joint user/Apple control) of user data.

No thanks, I am fine with iPhone as it is.

If this is not something a customer wants then a customer should be able to remove this "value".

You are able to remove it easily -- do not buy an iPhone to begin with because that's its main selling point. Buy Android or make your own phone that you will have full control over.

None of this would force you to get rid of this on your own personal devices. Indeed, a free market would just as easily empower you to keep it as to get rid of it.

That's a disingenious argument and you know it -- adding this "choice" nullifies the real choice which I made when I selected and purchased the phone. I have specifically chosen a phone where no one except the manufacturer has the ability to integrate deep with the OS in order to install apps and where I am the one asked for all permissions. I have chosen Apple device and software because I as a developer have evaluated the architecture and decided it is good enough to trust them.

We do still have the ideal of the "free market", and it is this ideal that you're arguing against.

I am only arguing against the "free for all" access to me (the user base). I want to be the sole person deciding who can access me when I make a purchase.

Food for thought -- let's say FBI makes an app store for iOS and it has a single iSpyOnYou app in it.

Of course, you have the right* not to install it, but before the forced change on side-loading it wasn't even physically possible to install it so it's a downgrade security-wise.

* - Until the next time a TSA agent takes you out of the boarding line at the airport and detains you indefinitely until you unlock your phone so they can install it for you.

I don't understand why you think anyone should prefer a system in which their choices are constrained by non-governmental third parties.

What you call "constrained choices" I call simplicity, and believe it or not many people prefer it. You will prefer it more as you get older and have less time to fiddle with things.

I prefer having only Steam with all my games there.

I also prefered cable TV but people complained about it and now we have all the streaming services which when added up cost more, take more of your time to manage, and have less and worse quality content than cable TV had.

Be careful what you wish for.

A system in which companies can sell a person a product but then still claim ownership of it.

If I bought an iPhone I expect authorized service to fix it if it breaks because I certainly am not capable of doing it even if I had all the schematics and tools.

Is it really that irrational that the manufacturer expects you not to open your phone and mess with it if you expect them to be able to repair it for free during warranty period?

So you're saying they have to sell everywhere.

No, I am saying that Epic is already exhibiting anti-competitive behavior in another market (PC) and that they aren't a bastion of freedom for consumers they purport themselves to be.

 

[CmdrShepard]

Not that I don't believe it's higher-latency, but I'm curious how you figure that. For large payloads, I think the latency should be even less than that figure. Remember, we're not talking about twisted-pair.

I don't know which protocols are used on that Ethernet, do you have any idea whether it's TCP, UDP, or something proprietary and does it even have Ethernet framing (which then begs the question of why call it Ethernet to begin with)?

 

[Order 66]

I'm so confused. Is this a joke, or would ethernet actually be feasible. secondly, why would you use ethernet. I don't understand the point of it.

 

[bit_user]

I don't know which protocols are used on that Ethernet, do you have any idea whether it's TCP, UDP, or something proprietary and does it even have Ethernet framing (which then begs the question of why call it Ethernet to begin with)?

I don't know why you'd use TCP. At 4x100 Gbps per chip, that would add a lot of overhead. TCP also adds byte stream semantics, which would be unusual for a fabric of this sort.

As for UDP, I don't even see why you'd use IP-based addressing, at this level.

I expect it's a light-weight, proprietary protocol they layered atop Ethernet, which they're just using for its addressing, switching, and congestion-management features. Maybe one of their Hot Chips presentations says more. They must be using at least that much of Ethernet, in order to benefit from the standards and the wealth of available IP and infrastructure on the market.

Edit: found it! Here:

https://hc32.hotchips.org/assets/program/conference/day2/HotChips2020_FPGA_Tenstorrent_v02.pdf
​

Doesn't go into detail, but does list some of their protocol's features.

Router:

• Moves data across the NoC
• Back-pressure, guaranteed ordering, deadlock free
• Optimized multi-cast and gather operation for ML workloads

would ethernet actually be feasible. secondly, why would you use ethernet. I don't understand the point of it.

If you look at the design of any scalable, switched fabric, you'll find a number of features in common with Ethernet. I think Jim's point is: why invent your own protocol and design all the supporting silicon, instead of using something that's well-established and has quite a wide range of validated solutions on the market?

 

[slightnitpick]

That's a fully irrational, entitled, and absolutist liberal view which totally ignores the amount of gullible or otherwise challenged people who might end up taken advantage of or physically hurt (or worse) if there were no restrictions on what end users can do with the products they buy.

You don't understand what the word "irrational" means. Just because I don't share your predicates doesn't mean I'm not working from predicates.

"Entitlement" is a legal term. I am entitled to certain things. You argue that I shouldn't be, and instead a manufacturer should instead have those entitlements.

You're claiming that I'm absolutist and you aren't? I haven't seen any wiggle room on this topic in your statements.

Yes, rights and freedoms have to have tradeoffs. I've made it clear I disagree with the tradeoffs you are making.

The user has invested the price of a phone to get said phone together with a specific end-user experience.

Or they took what their phone company was subsidizing years ago and stuck with it. How often do people change platforms?

Is it really that irrational that the manufacturer expects you not to open your phone and mess with it if you expect them to be able to repair it for free during warranty period?

You seem to be unaware of standing law on this issue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson–Moss_Warranty_Act

Warrantors cannot require that only branded parts be used with the product in order to retain the warranty.[7] This is commonly referred to as the "tie-in sales" provisions[8] and is frequently mentioned in the context of third-party computer parts, such as memory and hard drives.

I'm sure there are some exceptions to this for particular sealed systems (such as a CPU or HDD). But arguing that the entire phone is a sealed system when it's designed to be field repairable is probably going too far. And certainly a warrantor should not be liable for mistakes made by a third-party repair shop (or user). The third party repair shop (or user) is liable for that. But for all actual OEM product defects the warrantor is liable regardless of what anyone else has done to the product.

I don't understand why you think any company can willfully violate the law and be justified in it. So again, I presume you are just unaware that Apple's requirements for first party services are unlawful.

 

[ezst036]

We can agree to disagree on this one -- for me they add enough value to justify higher prices.

There's going to be a lot of that.

The user is paying for WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) with absolutely no risk involved. It's an informed decision to buy into the system because there are other options out there.

Hardly. Both Google and Apple engage in fairly shady practices to ensure their duopoly persists. Besides, the whole class action lawsuit about Apple's sabotaged batteries in "Batterygate" blows this out of the water. They really did show off their anti-customer nature with this one. Apple for Apple. Don't forget to buy another Apple product.

There is nothing "informed" about buying Apple. They never tell you that the whole strategy isn't about your current purchase. Apple's strategy is about your next purchase. Getting you hooked on an overpriced ecosystem that prevents you from leaving.

Good luck trying to use Apple products on non-Apple approved platforms, that too also causes issues.

There are whole memes and rants out there about the green bubble and the blue bubble. (For those who know)

The company making said phone has invested in hardware and software design and validation, custom tooling, material sourcing, manufacturing, packaging, transportation, distribution, retail, marketing,.. I could go on but I hope you get the point.

Without the entirety of the evidence, I don't get the point - you keep leaving off the end. As long as you refuse to pull in the full picture, it's impossible to get the point.

On the other hand you seem to ascribe more importance (as self-entitled people often do) to personal "investment" than it is actually warranted.

Not at all. There are personal hobbyists and there are mid level corporations. Don't forget about the mid-level corporations servicing customers. When a provider company pulls the plug, the whole chain is disrupted. You wanted to act like I didn't mention that, but I did.

In contrast, another app store on iOS doesn't bring any benefits

You don't get to decide that, nobody should. The customer should be the sole decider. They're the ones seeking benefits, therefore, they are the ones - the only ones - who can actually ascribe value.

And no, "but they keep making purchases" is not proof. It's a walled garden full of traps to suck your money in with no escape.

Is there someone holding you at a gunpoint to buy an iPhone or an NVIDIA card? No? Then why the f*ck you are complaining about aggression?

You keep hearing it because its true. You don't like it so it makes you uncomfortable, therefore you paint it with a propagandist scenario in order to brush it aside.

You're going to keep hearing it because it remains true. Facts are stubborn things. These are malicious companies.

The chance of NVIDIA doing that is way smaller than a chance that all the people clamoring about CUDA being a monopoly are a bunch of entitled and self-centered liars, hypocrites, and attention whores.

"Oh, that will never happen." "Oh, that will never happen." "Oh, that will never happen."

It happens all the time. That is the reason why people have horror stories and bad memories about it. With Nvidia and CUDA, the question isn't if its when.

People used to think Apple would never stop using PowerPC. Now look where we are at. "Oh, that will never happen." Look at where we are at, open your eyes and look at it.

For example, if you choose Linux as a host OS for your hardware device you will sink time and effort into hiring Linux developers, writing drivers for your hardware, etc. If, for whatever reason, you have to switch from Linux to Windows all that effort is wasted just as if it was the other way around (going from Windows to Linux).

The crux is -- you are making an informed decision

No, you're wrong. You're flat wrong. You're once again ignoring what happens when the providing parent company pulls its support on its own. There there is no "if you choose". I didn't choose!

Your example falls flat.

A simple example is TPM 2.0. Nobody chose that. Microsoft arbitrarily decided that. I already cited Apple PPC above. There are countless examples.

No customer chose this: --> --> --> Apple sabotaging batteries. <-- <-- <-- I didn't choose!

This part right here regarding so called "informed consent" is the whole ball of wax. Far too many times these companies violate the principle of informed consent.

It's not my choice. I didn't get to choose. See sabotaged batteries for more details.

then you are delusional and you should really seek professional help.

I love being talked down to. Especially, this time in the morning.

"Show us on this doll where the big bad NVIDIA has touched you."

You're a real swell guy, but I think that if I post the picture, it will be incorrectly interpreted. However, Linus Torvalds' response here is the best, aimed in the correct direction. At Nvidia

https://www.techspot.com/news/49025...ves-them-the-middle-finger-during-speech.html

"And Nvidia has been the single worst company we've ever dealt with"

 

[CmdrShepard]

"Entitlement" is a legal term. I am entitled to certain things. You argue that I shouldn't be, and instead a manufacturer should instead have those entitlements.

I am arguing that you are entitled to what's offered in the contract when you buy something. If you don't like it, don't buy it.

You shouldn't get to demand changes to a product before you even buy it which is what the majority of anti-Apple whiners are doing on the Internet for attention.

Worse yet, those changes you are demanding before you even entered the legal contract (which means you aren't entitled to jack sh*t) would retroactively affect other people's existing contracts. But with people like you it's always "ME!ME!ME!", others don't exist, or if they do they must accept your worldview and be happy that you are "fighting for them".

I also argue that the manufacturers shouldn't have the right to change or remove features after the product has been sold.

You're claiming that I'm absolutist and you aren't? I haven't seen any wiggle room on this topic in your statements.

Wiggle room? You have Android, Tizen, Harmony OS, and you have iOS to name just a few. If you can't find something that suits your use case or adapt then the problem is with you, not with any of those products.

I've made it clear I disagree with the tradeoffs you are making.

Luckily you don't have to make the same tradeoff with which I am perfectly happy with. Just buy Samsung and enjoy your freedom without tradeoffs.

 

[CmdrShepard]

Hardly. Both Google and Apple engage in fairly shady practices to ensure their duopoly persists.

Like any other companies including those that manufacture and distribute food and medicine. I don't see you rioting in the streets on those issues though.

Besides, the whole class action lawsuit about Apple's sabotaged batteries in "Batterygate" blows this out of the water. They really did show off their anti-customer nature with this one. Apple for Apple. Don't forget to buy another Apple product.

So a software measure that minimaly reduced CPU performance on old phones where an aging battery would cause unexpected shutdowns otherwise was evil, and it would have been much better if people were not able to complete their emergency call because phone suddenly turned itself off or if the flash memory got damaged as a result of power dropping out while writing to the chip?

And of course, those class action lawsuits which are nothing more than lawyers' cash grabs (because the class usually gets next to nothing) are a good thing?

There is nothing "informed" about buying Apple. They never tell you that the whole strategy isn't about your current purchase. Apple's strategy is about your next purchase. Getting you hooked on an overpriced ecosystem that prevents you from leaving.

You apparently have no idea what you are talking about since you are repeating typical Apple hater talking points without any proof, and to top it off you are calling me both stupid and an addict in the same sentence.

Nobody hooks me on anything. I have decided to use Steam and I made myself dependent on their service. Same goes with Apple and NVIDIA. I am happy with my choices, and if at some point in future I stop being happy I will make a new choice. I am aware that it's not going to be painless, but as a responsible person I can only blame myself for the choices that I made.

The likes of you on the other hand are the Borg -- you want to turn everything into everything else, you want to make everything unified and without distinction and drag everyone down into mediocrity like those dozens of "different" brands of canned pineapple in the supermarket so that when you choose one or the other your choice is all but superficial and hence without consequences so that you can feel good about yourself others be damned.

Without the entirety of the evidence, I don't get the point - you keep leaving off the end. As long as you refuse to pull in the full picture, it's impossible to get the point.

You wouldn't get the point if you fell in a black hole.

You don't get to decide that, nobody should. The customer should be the sole decider. They're the ones seeking benefits, therefore, they are the ones - the only ones - who can actually ascribe value.

I am not deciding anything, just stating the facts based on your own example which I quoted and you left it off because it doesn't suit your argument anymore.

And no, "but they keep making purchases" is not proof. It's a walled garden full of traps to suck your money in with no escape.

When was the last time you went to the market to shop for groceries? It's pretty much the same thing.

You keep hearing it because its true.

And it's true because you say so? Sorry but no, citation needed. Show me someone who is forced to buy Apple or NVIDIA products. I'll wait.

It happens all the time. That is the reason why people have horror stories and bad memories about it.

Give us some examples of major companies doing that without legal consequences. I'll wait.

With Nvidia and CUDA, the question isn't if its when.

Yes, and Apple is going bankrupt any minute now, and 2024 is going to be the Year of Linux Desktop just you wait... ROFL.

People used to think Apple would never stop using PowerPC. Now look where we are at. "Oh, that will never happen." Look at where we are at, open your eyes and look at it.

Oh stop with the melodrama already.

What's so bad about dropping PowerPC?

I suggest you check the timeline of the transition and see that it wasn't something done lightly and that Apple gave plenty of time to customers and developers to cope with it.

They also transitioned from Intel to making their own CPUs and hired one of the principal engineers who designed DEC Alpha. Is that a bad thing too? Because those new Macs with new CPUs are way better as a whole than any Intel or AMD based PC. True, Intel and AMD are faster for now but only through using irresponsible amounts of power and producing a lot of heat.

You're once again ignoring what happens when the providing parent company pulls its support on its own. There there is no "if you choose". I didn't choose!

But you did choose the company.

By choosing someone else's product or service you are placing trust in them making future decisions on your behalf. Their decisions regarding their product or service may or may not suit you. If they don't suit you, then you have made a bad choice by placing your trust in that company. Sorry, but there's just no other way to slice it -- you need to grow up and accept responsibility.

A simple example is TPM 2.0. Nobody chose that. Microsoft arbitrarily decided that.

Since you are on a tech site I will assume you are well informed.

TPM 1.2 was supported since Windows Vista, and even Windows 7 has TPM 2.0 support with an official patch. Ever since Jaunary 2007, the writing was on the wall that TPM will become mandatory sometime in the future.

So I ask you now, why were you still using Windows when you knew that? You had, what, just 17 years to migrate? What was stopping you?

Nothing, that's what. You yourself have chosen to stay with Microsoft despite the risk of them making this unwanted choice for you.

So please stop bullsh*tting the adults here about not having a choice because that's simply a boldfaced lie.

No customer chose this: --> --> --> Apple sabotaging batteries. <-- <-- <-- I didn't choose!

Stop spreading FUD -- Apple didn't sabotage any batteries, they worked around a small percentage of aging batteries by reducing CPU performance a bit to avoid unexpected shutdowns. I agree they could have handled it better, but it's way less of an issue than you are trying to make it look like.

"And Nvidia has been the single worst company we've ever dealt with"

Does that mean he never dealt with Oracle?

 

[slightnitpick]

Luckily you don't have to make the same tradeoff with which I am perfectly happy with. Just buy Samsung and enjoy your freedom without tradeoffs.

I had a really busy week back when we were having this conversation and completely lost the impetus to continue this argument. But the tradeoff for me was the turnoff of 3G. Texting feature phones disappeared. The very few I've found that exist are either far more expensive (and mostly not fit for purpose), much larger, and took a while to come back. Plus they're loaded with Android. I ended up with a cheap 4G smartphone that I dumbed down as much as I was comfortable with (didn't want to brick it accidentally). Even so it took some years before I finally figured out how to turn off automatic updates, and suffered forced updates (that added features that made it more difficult to do what I want to do with this phone) the couple times a year I turned on wifi/data for other reasons. I still can't figure out how to reset things without either linking a Google account to this device, something I am not willing to do, or risk losing data. From what I've read, Apple is no better, and to boot doesn't offer a user replaceable battery.

 

[CmdrShepard]

I had a really busy week back when we were having this conversation and completely lost the impetus to continue this argument. But the tradeoff for me was the turnoff of 3G. Texting feature phones disappeared. The very few I've found that exist are either far more expensive (and mostly not fit for purpose), much larger, and took a while to come back. Plus they're loaded with Android. I ended up with a cheap 4G smartphone that I dumbed down as much as I was comfortable with (didn't want to brick it accidentally). Even so it took some years before I finally figured out how to turn off automatic updates, and suffered forced updates (that added features that made it more difficult to do what I want to do with this phone) the couple times a year I turned on wifi/data for other reasons. I still can't figure out how to reset things without either linking a Google account to this device, something I am not willing to do, or risk losing data. From what I've read, Apple is no better, and to boot doesn't offer a user replaceable battery.

When I was younger I liked to tinker -- I used Android and I used toi customize the sh*t out of it including flashing custom ROMs, removing junk, and patching Java bytecode to change app "features" that annoyed me.

Nowadays, I just want things to work, be reasonably secure, don't invade my privacy, and be out of my way as much as possible so I can quickly do whatever I need to do with them.

For me, Apple does that. Or at least it was doing until they were forced to open things up.

Not sure if you are following, but Apple was ordered to remove a provision from the 3rd party store agreement -- basically Apple wanted to ensure that apps in 3rd party stores must exist in their store but the EU said no.

That was exactly what I was afraid of -- now begins the fragmentation and enshitification of iOS platform.

Epic Games already pays for exclusives on PC, now they will do it on the iOS too. You need Microsoft Authenticator? Sure, grab Microsoft Store and accept all sort of spying and ads hidden at the bottom of 57-th page of ToS just to get it. Want Instagram? Even worse, deal with Meta directly. Adobe? They'll have a store too, why not. Amazon? Ditto. So basically, instead of having one store to pay and download stuff from you will have dozens. Good luck managing all those subscriptions.

And don't tell me that won't affect me because it will even if I don't need any of those apps -- Apple will have to play whack-a-mole with 3rd party stores because they'll keep coming up with ways to subvert the built-in security and privacy mechanisms in the OS. Overall, the plaftorm will be weakened for everyone just because a handful of loudmouths wanted to have their cake and eat it.