Cringely Predicts Moore's Law Will Continue -- Because of AI (cringely.com) 35
"I predict that Generative Artificial Intelligence is going to go a long way toward keeping Moore's Law in force," writes long-time tech pundit Robert X. Cringely, "and the way this is going to happen says a lot about the chip business, global economics, and Artificial Intelligence, itself."
The current el cheapo AI research frenzy is likely to subside as LLaMA ages into obsolescence and has to be replaced by something more expensive, putting Google, Microsoft and OpenAI back in control. Understand, too, that these big, established companies like the idea of LLMs costing so much to build because that makes it harder for startups to disrupt. It's a form of restraint of trade, though not illegal...
[T]here is an opportunity for vertical LLMs trained on different data — real data from industries like medicine and auto mechanics. Whoever owns this data will own these markets. What will make these models both better and cheaper is they can be built from a LLaMA base because most of that data doesn't have to change over time... Bloomberg has already done this for investment advice using its unique database of historical financial information. With an average of 50 billion nodes, these vertical models will cost only five percent as much to run as OpenAI's one billion node GPT-4...
[I]t ought to be pretty simple to apply AI to chip design, building custom chip design models to iterate into existing simulators and refine new designs that actually have a pretty good chance of being novel.
And who will be the first to leverage this chip AI? China... Look for fabless AI chip startups to spring-up around Chinese universities and for the Chinese Communist Party to put lots of money into this very cost-effective work. Because even if it's used just to slim-down and improve existing designs, that's another generation of chips China might otherwise not have had at all.
[T]here is an opportunity for vertical LLMs trained on different data — real data from industries like medicine and auto mechanics. Whoever owns this data will own these markets. What will make these models both better and cheaper is they can be built from a LLaMA base because most of that data doesn't have to change over time... Bloomberg has already done this for investment advice using its unique database of historical financial information. With an average of 50 billion nodes, these vertical models will cost only five percent as much to run as OpenAI's one billion node GPT-4...
[I]t ought to be pretty simple to apply AI to chip design, building custom chip design models to iterate into existing simulators and refine new designs that actually have a pretty good chance of being novel.
And who will be the first to leverage this chip AI? China... Look for fabless AI chip startups to spring-up around Chinese universities and for the Chinese Communist Party to put lots of money into this very cost-effective work. Because even if it's used just to slim-down and improve existing designs, that's another generation of chips China might otherwise not have had at all.
what's worse? (Score:1)
The total lack of insight and understanding displayed by the author, or that EditorDavid thinks it's worthwhile enough to plagiarize?
Moronic...from beginning to end. SuperKendall, is that you?
Re:what's worse? (Score:5, Informative)
The total lack of insight and understanding displayed by the author, or that EditorDavid thinks it's worthwhile enough to plagiarize?
Moronic...from beginning to end.
A Brief History of Robert X. Cringely
In 1987, Mark Stephens was hired by Infoworld magazine where he began writing under the name Robert X. Cringely. When he left Infoworld in 1995, Stephens continued using the Cringely name and Infoworld sued him. They eventually reached an agreement where he was allowed to continue using the Cringely name as long as he wasn't working for a competitor of Infoworld.
For several years Mark Stephens has claimed that he is "the original Robert X. Cringely". But he isn't. Before he was hired by Infoworld there were at least two other people there who wrote columns using the Cringely pseudonym.
At various points in his career, he has also claimed that he was employee number 12 at Apple, he helped them move out of Steve Jobs' garage, and he designed the original Mac trash can icon. None of this is true and there is no credible evidence that Mark Stephens ever worked at Apple.
In 2015 Cringely announced "The Mineserver Project" on Kickstarter. These miniature Minecraft servers would be small, inexpensive ARM-based boards, running Linux, slightly more powerful than a Raspberry Pi and selling for $99. The project raised $35,000 and the finished boards were supposed to ship in December 2015. But they didn't.
All through 2015 and 2016 Cringely repeatedly promised that the Mineserver boards would be finished and shipped soon. But there was always "one more little problem" that was holding things up. In November 2016 Cringely wrote on his Kickstarter page: "We'll finally start shipping the week after Thanksgiving. Thanks for your patience and support."
Nothing was ever shipped, and there were no more updates posted to the Kickstarter project. Ever.
In July 2017 Cringely posted on his blog that he was suddenly blind from cataracts, but he would have his sight restored in a couple of weeks, so maybe everyone could stop asking about the Mineserver boards until then. Never mind that nobody has cataract surgery on both eyes at the same time, that's a minor detail.
Three months later, Cringely claimed that his house burned down and all the Mineserver boards were destroyed. Just like the cataracts and his tenure at Apple, there is very little evidence that any of this is actually true.
In May 2018 Cringely wrote that it would be another 16 months before his insurance company paid him for his house that burned down, and that it might not pay for the melted Mineservers at all. But yet again, he promised, "We're back in the Mineserver business, preparing a successor model because the available boards and other parts have all changed. Every supporter will get their Mineserver before the end of the year."
All through 2018 there were repeated promises that money would be found somewhere, and the Mineservers would finally ship. But 2018 ended with nothing.
In June 2019, Cringely posted his thoughts on "The Future of Television", with no mention of the Mineservers at all, and he didn't post anything to his blog for the rest of 2019, although he was still posting about airplane trivia on Quora.com.
In January 2020, Cringely's latest and biggest tall tale hit his blog when he announced his new business venture called Eldorado Space. This would be a company using F-104 jets to launch satellites. Cringely says revenue from this business will fund his retirement (he was 67 at the time) and give him enough money to finally deliver those Minecraft servers he's been promising for the last 5 years.
He also claimed that the business is guaranteed to succeed because his new company has bought all the F-104s in existence, so he won't have any competition. To prove this is all real and legitimate, Cringely found a picture of an F-104 on the Internet and photoshopped the word Eldorado onto it
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Aso, he once claimed he had a PhD, but later admitted he did not.
Stanford Says Cringely Never Completed Doctorate [ctinsider.com]
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The total lack of insight and understanding displayed by the author, or that EditorDavid thinks it's worthwhile enough to plagiarize?
Moronic...from beginning to end.
A Brief History of Robert X. Cringely In 1987, Mark Stephens was hired by Infoworld magazine where he began writing under the name Robert X. Cringely. When he left Infoworld in 1995, Stephens continued using the Cringely name and Infoworld sued him. They eventually reached an agreement where he was allowed to continue using the Cringely name as long as he wasn't working for a competitor of Infoworld. For several years Mark Stephens has claimed that he is "the original Robert X. Cringely". But he isn't. Before he was hired by Infoworld there were at least two other people there who wrote columns using the Cringely pseudonym. At various points in his career, he has also claimed that he was employee number 12 at Apple, he helped them move out of Steve Jobs' garage, and he designed the original Mac trash can icon. None of this is true and there is no credible evidence that Mark Stephens ever worked at Apple. In 2015 Cringely announced "The Mineserver Project" on Kickstarter. These miniature Minecraft servers would be small, inexpensive ARM-based boards, running Linux, slightly more powerful than a Raspberry Pi and selling for $99. The project raised $35,000 and the finished boards were supposed to ship in December 2015. But they didn't. All through 2015 and 2016 Cringely repeatedly promised that the Mineserver boards would be finished and shipped soon. But there was always "one more little problem" that was holding things up. In November 2016 Cringely wrote on his Kickstarter page: "We'll finally start shipping the week after Thanksgiving. Thanks for your patience and support." Nothing was ever shipped, and there were no more updates posted to the Kickstarter project. Ever. In July 2017 Cringely posted on his blog that he was suddenly blind from cataracts, but he would have his sight restored in a couple of weeks, so maybe everyone could stop asking about the Mineserver boards until then. Never mind that nobody has cataract surgery on both eyes at the same time, that's a minor detail. Three months later, Cringely claimed that his house burned down and all the Mineserver boards were destroyed. Just like the cataracts and his tenure at Apple, there is very little evidence that any of this is actually true. In May 2018 Cringely wrote that it would be another 16 months before his insurance company paid him for his house that burned down, and that it might not pay for the melted Mineservers at all. But yet again, he promised, "We're back in the Mineserver business, preparing a successor model because the available boards and other parts have all changed. Every supporter will get their Mineserver before the end of the year." All through 2018 there were repeated promises that money would be found somewhere, and the Mineservers would finally ship. But 2018 ended with nothing. In June 2019, Cringely posted his thoughts on "The Future of Television", with no mention of the Mineservers at all, and he didn't post anything to his blog for the rest of 2019, although he was still posting about airplane trivia on Quora.com. In January 2020, Cringely's latest and biggest tall tale hit his blog when he announced his new business venture called Eldorado Space. This would be a company using F-104 jets to launch satellites. Cringely says revenue from this business will fund his retirement (he was 67 at the time) and give him enough money to finally deliver those Minecraft servers he's been promising for the last 5 years. He also claimed that the business is guaranteed to succeed because his new company has bought all the F-104s in existence, so he won't have any competition. To prove this is all real and legitimate, Cringely found a picture of an F-104 on the Internet and photoshopped the word Eldorado onto it. So ... you can't pay back the $35,000 from the failed Mineserver project, but you can buy a bunch of F-104 jets?
The truth and Robert X. Cringely are not well acquainted.
As of May 2023, to the surprise of exactly no one, there has been no mention of Eldorado Space since the original blog entry, more than 3 years ago.
It's important to be cautious when evaluating claims and projects, especially when there is a lack of credible evidence and a history of unfulfilled promises. In the case of Robert X. Cringely, his track record raises doubts about his credibility and the likelihood of his ventures' success. When considering investments or supporting projects, it's crucial to thoroughly research and verify the claims made by individuals or companies involved.
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Retired? (Score:1)
I thought this hack retired?
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Not for long (Score:4, Informative)
IBM already tried to make it a serious medical tool and failed miserably years ago. The LLM bots are gimmicks. This is totally looking like the next tulip mania.
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AI vs Physics ... (Score:2)
AI has already lost ...
Magic (Score:2)
What am I missing? (Score:2)
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The obvious answer is a nuclear fission processor which splits atoms and uses the resultant particles as transistors. The best part is that the processor is self-powered via the energy released from the fission reaction. Several decades after that, we'll be able to use fusion to reassemble the particles and then it's just a matter of finding a way to repeat the process several billion times per second. For once, I think Cringey
apply AI to chip design (Score:3)
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AI is very good at "cheating". It did it with Go, it does it with video games, it's done it in .mil scenarios.
I saw one "crazy" AI chip layout that reduced power by 16%. I don't know if it would be actually feasible to mass manufacture because it's not a "city blocks" layout.
I don't know how hard it would be to debug for errata either, but these may be solvable problems.
Mark's long-term predictions are surprisingly good. One year out is more mixed.
I remember in the 90's when he said by 2012 it should be
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Tech pundit Robert X. Cringely is clueless (Score:2)
Regenerative AI simply cannot deliver new chip designs. It can't even write bad "Black Mirror" scripts.
https://inews.co.uk/culture/te... [inews.co.uk]
There is zero creativity in the 'AI' results with zero common sense engineering of even simple circuits and electrical concepts.
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Yep. I asked Chat GPT how to make a 0.1nm process node silicon wafer.
It replied that it is beyond the capabilities of existing technology, which is at least a correct answer.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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I think you would need at least 3 atoms of silicon + 3 atoms of doping material?
And my guess is that even if it was possible to produce this, which probably it will be some day, it wouldn't actually work.
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The interesting thing about Moore's law is that, for probably the last 3 decades that I have worked in the Semiconductor industry, people have been saying that it will soon come to an end.
It will end, but perhaps not as soon as you think. You don't have to shrink transistors further to put more of them in a chip: just make the chip larger, or stack a bunch of chips.
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I don't understand why nerds continue to get so worked up about Moore's Law. As you say it was just an observation and at the time a statement about expected trends from a guy who was both an engineer and an executive at the head of an industrial leader in the space. To Gordon Moore's credit. His observation proved correct. His insight and leadership made Intel a household name! Obviously was among the most talented, intelligent, and perceptive among us!
He is the thing though, the sun already set on the t
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Reality (Score:4, Funny)
ChatGPT can't convert simple Verilog modules into VHDL entities that are syntactically correct.
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Cringely? (Score:2)
Not a Law (Score:2)
Moore's Law is a law of economics, not a law of nature. It's a question of how much capital the industry is willing to reinvest to improve production and how frequently you can convince businesses and consumers to replace their rather expensive hardware. Beyond that, there are real, physical limits on the processing and transmission of data.
Because AI (Score:3)
That's just like Fast and the Furious: because family!