Ask HN: ASICs made GPU crypto mining obsolete. Will ASICs for AI happen?
The development of ASICs has made GPU crypto mining obsolete, and a similar trend may emerge in the field of AI. A new ASIC from Phantafield features a novel architecture with local dynamic ram areas, allowing for more efficient use of space and improved computing capabilities. This innovation is expected to lead to significant improvements in the cost of compute over the next decade, potentially reviving Moore's law.
- ▪Phantafield's ASIC uses local dynamic ram areas to hold weights locally, increasing efficiency
- ▪The ASIC uses bit serial computing to fit more computing into the same chip area
- ▪The new architecture supports FP8 and other bit sizes, improving flexibility
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
I think the ASIC we discussed yesterday[1] from Phantafield is a hint of what is to come. Instead of constantly moving weights from HBM to MACs, they have local dynamic ram areas that hold the weights locally, using a novel architecture that is more efficient at using space than the traditional SRAM cell, especially in a mostly-read environment.Instead of doing MAC using 16 bit wide hardware, they do it all bit serial, so that they can fit far more computing into the same chip area, trading a bit of the speed they get from all that local RAM into efficiencies in usage. It also makes it easy to do FP8 support, or any other bit size required.I expect another few orders of magnitude improvement in the cost of compute over the next decade.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Ycombinator.