More on x86 – The Chip Letter

Re:More on x86 – The Chip Letter by fpgamlirfanboy on Thursday April 25, 2024 @11:44AM (#40158917)

i don't have an outrageous amount of experience here but i work at a place that designs and sells x86 chips (and i work on arch adjacent things). i'll just say this: do not underestimate the effect of institutional friction/momentum/complacency on "time to ship". point being: maybe RISC is more "agile" than CISC but also maybe Tenstorrent could have chosen a CISC approach and still iterated quickly simply because they're not an institution.

edit:

> They are working on 2-3 CPU designs, 2-3 AI accelerators, all the IO stuff, etc

also do we actually know how much they're designing wholecloth and not buying off the shelf?

edit2: i think Tenstorrent is great and i'll probably buy a devkit soon (as well as maybe apply lol...)

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Re:More on x86 – The Chip Letter by The_Colonel on Thursday April 25, 2024 @12:27PM (#40159558)

Yeah, I don't buy this argument either. Startups like that often have the best handpicked people, won't be burdened by established processes, won't need segmentation, chips designed for specific customers / use cases, doesn't have a brand to protect abd generally can act aggresively / risky.

It's kind of like comparing Photopea with Photoshop, the former being developed by a single person, and then claiming this huge productivity difference is caused by Photopea using Javascript (vs. C++ for Photoshop).

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