TSMC Execs Dismiss OpenAI Chief's $7 Trillion Chip Plan as 'Podcasting Bro' Vision (msn.com) 61
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) executives have dismissed OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's ambitious chip-making proposal as unrealistic, according to The New York Times. Altman, seeking to boost AI computing power, pitched a $7 trillion plan to build 36 semiconductor plants over several years during a visit to TSMC's Taiwan headquarters. TSMC leaders reportedly found Altman's proposal so far-fetched that they privately referred to him as a "podcasting bro," reflecting skepticism about his grasp of the semiconductor industry's complexities. The world's largest contract chipmaker, already grappling with multi-billion dollar expansion projects, viewed Altman's scheme as overly risky given the massive capital requirements and market uncertainties.
The problem with tech bros is (Score:5, Insightful)
However hare-brained their "visions" are, they're still dangerous and nefarious. Particularly Sam Altman.
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Not a bad FP, but I'm wondering why you think Altman is particularly "hare-brained", "dangerous", or "nefarious".
Well, I see a joke around the "hare-brained" part... How many Watts for a rabbit brain? Considering that the rabbit is in many ways more capable in the real world than large AI systems, it seems like the bunny wins. I've already mentioned the book from Jeff Hawkins that explains (among other matters) why the current AI summer is almost surely heading for another AI winter. (For PoC reference I ke
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The bunny community feels left out.
good for them! (Score:3)
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a pitch to this company to invest billions, hence the need for actual ROI projections based upon some level of reality.
Pitching the idea to build 36 chip fabs with $7T in the next several years is like pitching an idea to increase the birth rates in some countries by flying in a lot of women to those countries. Only on the very surface level does it make any sort of sense. The part Altman got right is the money required. The practicality and details are ignored.
Let's start with building 36 factories has so many logistical issues to overcome. Zoning, land ownership, facilities resourcing (these plants use a lot of water and
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Re: good for them! (Score:1)
None of that is particularly hard to do. Factories are built every day, the problem is the investment. 7T doesnâ(TM)t fund 36 factories for their lifetime (unlikely even for the first 5 year) and by the time they are built, OpenAI will have been bought out or gone bankrupt. Even if you get to production, you now have 36 more factories on the market that have to sell, Altman isnâ(TM)t a capitalist so he doesnâ(TM)t understand that the market already is drowning in chips that are âoegood e
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like pitching an idea to increase the birth rates in some countries by flying in a lot of women to those countries.
Obviously a nonsense plan. Far simpler to fly in a few virile men instead.
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doesn't appear to take into account anything in the real world...
Welcome to tech bro land. Two drink minimum.
Anyone can say big numbers. (Score:2, Funny)
I think a quadrillion dollars should be invested in chipmaking. Altman doesn't have real vision. Every man woman and child should be making chips.
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I think a quadrillion dollars should be invested in chipmaking. Altman doesn't have real vision. Every man woman and child should be making chips.
Well AFAIK they all do.
But we don't call them "chips" where I live.
(And people do make trillions shoveling them. Like Sam Altman!)
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a few quadrillion dollars does sound about right, i think that will also give me my flying car and cold fusion
Those who know... (Score:4, Insightful)
Intel put a LOT of money into trying to get their chip making back on track, and so far have failed miserably. It's not just about spending money, it's about having the right talent, even when you have the right equipment. The people at TSMC understand this all too well.
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Right. If it was just a case of throwing money at it, the Chinese would have had the whole market sewn up long ago and you better believe Apple wouldn't be using TSMC fabs.
But even if it could be done. Nobody is going to be giving Sam Altman 7 trillion to make chatgpt chips. AI might be important, but its not THAT important. Not yet, anyway.
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Right. If it was just a case of throwing money at it, the Chinese would have had the whole market sewn up long ago and you better believe Apple wouldn't be using TSMC fabs.
But even if it could be done. Nobody is going to be giving Sam Altman 7 trillion to make chatgpt chips. AI might be important, but its not THAT important. Not yet, anyway.
China doesn't have access to the equipment now. They were on track and were strategically blocked.
They don't have access to ASML equipment. They can't make their chips on TSMC either. However, they are welcome to buy Apple products made from these technologies but not the nVidia chips that could do AI.
Re: Those who know... (Score:2)
Didn't read the thread huh? These guys won't have access to ASML hardware within the stated timeframe either
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Even with that ASML equipment(which Intel did buy), Intel is still having problems getting the new fab processes working. This is where you can have professional tools, but if you don't know how to use them, you STILL won't be getting things done anywhere near as well as a professional. TSMC has professionals, Intel employees are wannabes.
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clearly you are not understanding AI
all you have to do is
dump 7 trillion dollars in altman's bank account and profit.
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When you have only bad choices go for the least damage. 4 years max or 8 years max is the hidden variable.
I know, everybody thinks the wrong one will spell the end of civilization, just like the previous six times.
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When you have only bad choices go for the least damage. 4 years max or 8 years max is the hidden variable.
I know, everybody thinks the wrong one will spell the end of civilization, just like the previous six times.
The difference is only one of the two choices has actually taken fairly concrete steps to destroying the US's tradition of performing willing and peaceful transfers of power.
So I need to have dinner with Bill, or a tiger that will eat my face. The problem is I've always found Bill really disagreeable and called him a 'face eating tiger'... so I guess the choice really is a toss-up.
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How about we elect the boring but sane one, the one who believes in elections and the peaceful transfer of power. And for the love of all that is decent, during the next primaries how about we pick some worthy candidates.
I don't know how you're so confident of Harris winning the primaries. She didn't last time, and next time she'll be running at a huge disadvantage from people feeling like they had no choice but to vote for her. Are you that confident she'll be such an amazing President that everyone will l
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Harris obviously is smart enough to outsmart the "stable genius" during the debate. She said it early what Trump was going to do, and she beat Trump easily. The only people who say that she isn't intelligent are those who listen to Fox News and the pseudo-conservative talk show radio.
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The debate was a wash.
No it wasn't.
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You have missed some really basic things about elections:
First, not only can people be FOR a given candidate, they may also be against a given candidate. This is where people having a track record will either help or hurt. There are the Trump supporters, and then you have the NOT-Trump people who will make a point of trying to get almost anyone else elected, just to keep Trump out. I've been saying that that is why Biden won in 2020, not so much because people loved Biden, but because of the "Not Trum
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The debate was a wash. The only purpose for candidates to debate is to shift public opinion and gain voters. Neither gained or lost any measurable number of voters overall from the not-debate. Therefore no one won or lost. It was 90 minutes of nothing.
I don't watch Fox News. I watch her interviews. She's a moron.
Well, I heard about hotties eating cats (pussy).
Re: Tucker Carlson on Joe Rogan (Score:2)
You don't watch Fox News but you think the debate didn't move opinions in favor of Harris? I call bullshit, since that's whose polls are showing that.
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The debate was a wash.
Literally not even most republican talking heads think that. You are really dumb (ironically for your user name) if you think it was a wash. Polls showed Harris won the debate by a comfortable margin, and even if it were "a wash" that is still a massive failure for republicans who universally were claiming Trump was going to end Harris. He didn't. He got rolled. Then cried afterwards that he got fact checked about people eating cats and dogs.
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Re: Tucker Carlson on Joe Rogan (Score:2)
Re: Tucker Carlson on Joe Rogan (Score:2)
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Harris only one the debate because should the moderators were on her side, doing everything they could play gotcha with Trump while giving here a pass. They even admitted they only planned to fact check Trump.
Harris for her part managed say EXACTLY NOTHING during the entire debate. She clarified no positions on anything and articulated no substantive policy on any subject. She won sure, but only because a massive handicap, given to her. In any other venue it would have been an embarrassing performance.
Re: Tucker Carlson on Joe Rogan (Score:1)
"Harris only one the debate because should the moderators were on her side"
Oh look, a fox news viewer.
Trump was called out on less than 10% of his lies. The evidence therefore shows that the moderators in fact favored him.
aww did I hurt your feefees? (Score:2)
Fuck your feelings, Trumpanzees.
He destroyed himself in that debate by repeating the couch fucker's Haitian migrant lies.
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Noooooooooo!!!1!11! Why can't you just let me stir up hatred against immigrants by falsely claiming that they're eating your pets!!!!! So unfair!
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Harris only one the debate because should the moderators were on her side, doing everything they could play gotcha with Trump while giving here a pass. They even admitted they only planned to fact check Trump.
Bahahahaha. They fact checked Trump because he tells such blatant lies they have to correct him. For example, the Haitians in Springfield, Ohio are not slaughtering pets. Even now he refuses to acknowledge none of that was true; however, spreading those lies means the Haitians have to endure harassment like bomb threats. [npr.org] But what are other people's lives to Trump. Nothing.
Harris for her part managed say EXACTLY NOTHING during the entire debate. She clarified no positions on anything and articulated no substantive policy on any subject. She won sure, but only because a massive handicap, given to her. In any other venue it would have been an embarrassing performance.
Bahahaha. When asked Trump about his plans, he didn't have plans. He had "concepts of plans". That's like my plan to get rich by doing no
Process? (Score:1)
This is a bad time to start building AI fabs.
Some bench prototypes use 1000x less power using different techniques.
AI problems, at least some classes, are robust against small error rates.
Traditional calculations need traditional chips with perfect error-corrected outputs.
Engineering trade-offs are obvious.
But OpenAI would love a $7T investment. In SV the biggest failures can be rewarded.
Altman and TSMC guy are optimizing for different optima.
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it's now almost 2 years after the release of ChatGPT. There are many vendors pitching x10 and more from ASIC to FPGA to Wafer. Hard to understand that in 2 years matrix-vector optimized for transformer training and inference is not all over the place in lieu of the absurd pricing for CUDA devices.
Submitting a more than 100k context right now - just first step initially processing it is probably more than 0.5 kW.
Money is not capital (Score:3)
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This is what happens when you either think money can buy anything, or that money is capital. We use money to measure capital, but capital is actually the physical assets and human capital (available labour) that we can use to accomplish a project. When you're talking about the chip industry, which operates right on the edge of what's possible, the capital available to expand it by leaps and bounds simply doesn't exist, no matter how much money you throw at it. If you try, you'll just cause massive inflation in the industry. Yes, you'll end up spending 7 trillion dollars, but you'll only get marginally more for it.
Well, if you seize/steal the physical assets and force the human capital to work for free, you don't need any money right?
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Well, if you seize/steal the physical assets and force the human capital to work for free, you don't need any money right?
Altman's plan was to build 36 new plants. How do you seize something that does not exist yet?
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Capital is the things you use to make things, essentially tools.
Labour is a separate thing, one reason for which is that we think owning capital is good but owning people is bad. "Human capital" is a finance invention of the same quality as "money is capital."
I point this out because other than that you're right, and also believing in "human capital" is how you spend billons of dollars buying a company for "the team" and then everyone quits. Or a little more apropos to this story, converting your company to
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Every so often someone comes along at just the right time and rolls double sixes 100 times in a row. Musk. Trump. Now Altman. The man walks on water. When he picks his nose, journalists gasp and write that is the most amazing snot ever picked out of a nose.
I do strongly suspect that he is just trying to leverage his influence to this purely ridiculous level of "vision" while he still has currency. I can imagine a lot of peop
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wrong investment (Score:2)
The tech behemoths now want a nuke plant and a dedicated fab plant for each of their new AI data centers. Not happening, and even if it could happen it would take many years to assemble.
Meanwhile a small fraction of that money could be invested in figuring out how to optimize existing resources. Make NPU's and TPU's that are much more computationally powerful and yet consume far less electricity. This has been the tech trend for CPU's and it would most likely be the best path forward for AI.
Stop saying "bro" (Score:1)
Caught with Knickers Down (Score:3)
One day, some day, some brainiac in a lab is going to find a way to perform the same AI calculations using some ingenious new mechanism with 1/100th the power demand and 1/10 the circuitry, if any circuitry at all - maybe biologics will be the next big thing. If that happens halfway into a $7-trillion chip plant build-out, a lot of investment money is going to be stranded high & dry. And I'll need a new graphics card.
God that rocks (Score:2)
Simple math (Score:2)