[HN Gopher] Tenstorrent Unveils High-End Wormhole AI Processors,...
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       Tenstorrent Unveils High-End Wormhole AI Processors, Featuring
       RISC-V
        
       Author : rbanffy
       Score  : 37 points
       Date   : 2024-07-20 19:34 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (wccftech.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (wccftech.com)
        
       | janice1999 wrote:
       | There's some performance numbers here:
       | https://github.com/tenstorrent/tt-metal
        
         | Tepix wrote:
         | What's t/s/u? tokens per second per user?
        
           | tucnak wrote:
           | per unit
        
         | qeternity wrote:
         | These numbers are...not great.
        
       | talldayo wrote:
       | > According to Tenstorrent, each Tensix core features "five
       | RISC-V baby cores," which allows scalability along with multi-
       | chip development much more effectively.
       | 
       | A neat feather in RISC-V's cap. Though to be fair, RISC-V
       | microcontrollers on PCI boards is nothing new; Nvidia's shipped
       | their RISC-V Falcon GSP for years, and a lot of recent storage
       | mediums rely on RISC-V microcontrollers.
        
       | Havoc wrote:
       | That's got to be bad pricing info
       | 
       | If a single N300 is $1,399 and a quietbox has four then the
       | quietbox can't be $1,500. Maybe the 1.5 is pricing of box minus
       | cards?
        
         | curious_cat_163 wrote:
         | QuietBox is $15,000 not $1,500:
         | https://tenstorrent.com/hardware/tt-quietbox
        
         | IshKebab wrote:
         | Yeah you can see on their website that $1500 is a deposit, and
         | the actual price is $15k. Still very competitive.
         | https://tenstorrent.com/hardware/tt-quietbox
        
       | IshKebab wrote:
       | That price is _very_ good - even better is the fact that you can
       | actually buy these right now (ships in 2 weeks apparently) by
       | going to their website! So many AI startups are PoA, only B2B
       | etc.
       | 
       | I did some 5 second digging into their code and it seems based on
       | their Github that they took Berkeley's BOOM CPU (written in
       | Chisel), and added support for the Vector 1.0 extension, and then
       | they've called this core Ocelot. Seems like the core is open
       | source at least.
       | 
       | https://github.com/tenstorrent/riscv-ocelot/blob/bobcat/READ...
       | 
       | Not sure about the driver/software situation though. Do you
       | actually get to run whatever RISC-V code you want on these? Could
       | be amazing if so.
        
         | A_D_E_P_T wrote:
         | Yeah, this is top-notch pricing and availability, and the chips
         | look very capable. Tenstorrent is probably going to 10x, and
         | fast.
        
           | kranke155 wrote:
           | Jim Keller the Silicon Ronin does it again.
        
         | camel-cdr wrote:
         | ocelot/bobcat has nothing to do with the ML cards. It was their
         | first go of implementing the RISC-V vector extension as a proof
         | of concept and they open sourced it. It's not very optimized
         | and the ascalon architecture will be a lot different.
        
       | Tepix wrote:
       | The Loudbox costs $6000 and contains 4x n300 cards at $1400 each
       | so on paper you only pay $400 for the box with 2 Xeons, 3.8TB
       | NVMe SSD and 512GB DDR4-3200 ECC RAM. Some buyers of the loudbox
       | might be tempted to sell the four n300 cards separately and keep
       | the box, i'd say it's worth at least $2500 or so.
       | 
       | How fast are the n300s compared to RTX 4090 or RTX 3090 cards?
       | 
       | At these prices it doesn't seem worthwhile to stick them into
       | your own workstation instead of going for theirs.
        
         | thrtythreeforty wrote:
         | If you click through to buy, it becomes apparent that
         | unfortunately there is a typo - QuietBox is actually _$15000_ ,
         | with a $1500 deposit.
        
           | Tepix wrote:
           | I'm talking about the $6000 loudbox, not the quietbox. By the
           | way, an extra $9000 just for water cooling seems... high?
        
             | aseipp wrote:
             | The Loudbox is $12k USD, you can see the pricing right
             | above the specs/description:
             | https://tenstorrent.com/hardware/tt-loudbox
        
             | rbanffy wrote:
             | It's 12K. $6000 is the deposit.
        
               | Tepix wrote:
               | Oh. Bummer.
        
       | ein0p wrote:
       | 288GB/s is way not enough in 2024. That compute will be mostly
       | idle outside the prompt processing phase.
        
         | tucnak wrote:
         | Tenstorrent is a RISC-V psyop confirmed.
        
       | drmpeg wrote:
       | Ian Cutress video.
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fa2GS86_cx8
        
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       (page generated 2024-07-20 23:06 UTC)