Science
Related: About this forumThe Trillion-Transistor Chip That Just Left a Supercomputer in the Dust
The history of computer chips is a thrilling tale of extreme miniaturization.
The smaller, the better is a trend thats given birth to the digital world as we know it. So, why on earth would you want to reverse course and make chips a lot bigger? Well, while theres no particularly good reason to have a chip the size of an iPad in an iPad, such a chip may prove to be genius for more specific uses, like artificial intelligence or simulations of the physical world.
At least, thats what Cerebras, the maker of the biggest computer chip in the world, is hoping.
The Cerebras Wafer-Scale Engine is massive any way you slice it. The chip is 8.5 inches to a side and houses 1.2 trillion transistors. The next biggest chip, NVIDIAs A100 GPU, measures an inch to a side and has a mere 54 billion transistors. The former is new, largely untested and, so far, one-of-a-kind. The latter is well-loved, mass-produced, and has taken over the world of AI and supercomputing in the last decade.
So can Goliath flip the script on David? Cerebras is on a mission to find out.
https://singularityhub.com/2020/11/22/the-trillion-transistor-chip-that-just-left-a-supercomputer-in-the-dust/
mrsfixit
(3 posts)gopiscrap
(23,758 posts)friendly_iconoclast
(15,333 posts)fearnobush
(3,960 posts)Weve already reached the limit on how fast a chip can get thus the only practical way to increase speed is to add more chips or cores to process more threads of execution simultaneously.
Arne
(2,012 posts)fleabiscuit
(4,542 posts)WillParkinson
(16,862 posts)Enough Data.