Not-a-GPU accelerator drivers cross the line

Posted Sep 3, 2021 6:06 UTC (Fri) by flussence (guest, #85566)
In reply to: Not-a-GPU accelerator drivers cross the line by marcH
Parent article: Not-a-GPU accelerator drivers cross the line

Not really comparable (unless you're talking Windows Mobile). My phone's 10 years old and although the manufacturer sucks, it still gets aftermarket OS updates thanks to having so many eyes on it; I've even done some myself to get better fonts.

These ML chips will never get that kind of attention, because they're neither interesting nor accessible to hackers. If the company's lucky they may become a curiosity in a hardware museum someday, but they probably won't be plugged in.

Not-a-GPU accelerator drivers cross the line

Posted Sep 3, 2021 19:13 UTC (Fri) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (5 responses)

> Not really comparable...

... to other Intel products either.

Not-a-GPU accelerator drivers cross the line

Posted Sep 21, 2021 4:09 UTC (Tue) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link] (4 responses)

From recent memory: GMA500 (infamously never had a functional driver beyond software framebuffer, PowerVR junk but Intel branding and responsibility); the entire Moorestown x86 SoC platform (all purged from the kernel earlier this year to prevent people using them, if anyone ever bought them); old CPUs getting excluded from microcode fixes for logo-and-website architectural vulnerabilities. I've heard sour opinions of their recent WiFi 6 stuff from the bufferbloat people too.

And that's just the problems concerning Linux. The entire USB3/4/C/TB mess they've foisted on the world is a miserable experience no matter which OS you use, to the point where I've actively avoided buying any devices that need it.

Not-a-GPU accelerator drivers cross the line

Posted Sep 21, 2021 5:47 UTC (Tue) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (3 responses)

Dunno about the USB mess. All other examples look like exceptions rather than the rule.

Not-a-GPU accelerator drivers cross the line

Posted Sep 21, 2021 17:10 UTC (Tue) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link] (2 responses)

The one area where they seem to be doing well is their own GPUs, I'll give them that. If Intel was an option that didn't require an entire new PC I'd consider it over upgrading my ageing Radeon, because they've always been on the ball with driver support and the latter seems to be perpetually 5 years behind on video codecs.

It'd be irresponsible to go there right now though, what with the tulip mania apocalypse going on.

Not-a-GPU accelerator drivers cross the line

Posted Sep 22, 2021 6:37 UTC (Wed) by zdzichu (subscriber, #17118) [Link] (1 responses)

You only need a PCIe slot (Intel does stand-alone GPUs, again):
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-iris-xe-dg1-budge...

Not-a-GPU accelerator drivers cross the line

Posted Sep 22, 2021 8:39 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

I don't think you can buy it just now, though. It should be available in near-future, though.

Not-a-GPU accelerator drivers cross the line

Posted Sep 7, 2021 10:42 UTC (Tue) by immibis (subscriber, #105511) [Link]

> These ML chips will never get that kind of attention, because they're neither interesting nor accessible to hackers. If the company's lucky they may become a curiosity in a hardware museum someday, but they probably won't be plugged in.

I have been looking at Tenstorrent, which promises to sell you a PCIe card for $750 (but it's not ready yet). Some other companies will sell you a powerful server for $X,XXX (or maybe $1X,XXX) which seems to still be in the range of (perhaps small groups of) really dedicated ML hackers. And, yes, some will only sell thousands of servers to huge cloud enterprises, but we can't assume that as a rule.

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Not to mention that in 5-10 years, all these now-outdated accelerators made by now-defunct startups will be discarded and will have to go somewhere. At that point you may be able to pick one up on eBay for $100-$1000.

I found a set of "obsolete" Infiniband hardware that way - where "obsolete" = "only does 40Gbps when the modern hardware does 400Gbps". So it does happen. Now I can hack on Infiniband if I get the time and inclination. Because there are open source drivers for these NICs.