Liberal Arts Blog — Is Moore’s Law Dead? Who Knows? Who Cares? Who Should? What About Huang’s Law?
Liberal Arts Blog — Monday is the Joy of Math, Statistics, Shapes, and Numbers Day
Today’s Topic: Is Moore’s Law Dead? who knows? who cares? who should? What about Huang’s law?
“How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” is a phrase used as metaphor for debates of no practical value. How about the number of transistors on a chip?
Allegedly, the Cerebras Wafer Scale Engine 2, has “a staggering 2.6 trillion transistors.”
What do you know about this brave, new world that the rest of us probably should but don’t? Can you explain it in plain English with a few understandable graphics?
Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
NVIDIA’S CEO JENSEN HUANG (below) SAYS THAT MOORE’S LAW IS DEAD
1. “The ability for Moore’s Law to deliver twice the performance at the same cost, or at the same performance, half the cost, every year and a half is over.” (Jensen Huang)
2. “Huang’s law is the observation in computer science and engineering that advancements in graphics processing units (GPUs) are growing at a rate much faster than traditional central processing units (CPUs).
3. “The observation is in contrast to Moore’s law that predicted the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit (IC) doubles about every two years.”
NB: “Huang’s law states that the performance of GPUs will more than double every two years.”
IN 2018 HUANG “OBSERVED THAT NVIDIA’S GPUs WERE “25 FASTER THAN FIVE YEARS AGO” WHEREAS MOORE’S LAW WOULD HAVE EXPECTED ONLY A TEN-FOLD INCREASE.”
1. “In 2006, Nvidia’s GPU had a 4x performance advantage over other CPUs. In 2018 the Nvidia GPU was 20 times faster than a comparable CPU node: the GPUs were 1.7x faster each year.”
2. “Moore’s law would predict a doubling every two years, however, Nvidia’s GPU performance was more than tripled every two years, fulfilling Huang’s law.”
3. “ Huang’s law claims that a synergy between hardware, software, and artificial intelligence makes the new law possible.”
“IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT CHIPS, IT’S ABOUT THE ENTIRE STACK.” (Jensen Huang) — Below Gordon Moore (1929–2023), co-founder of Intel — for more on Moore, see the last link below.
1. “He (Huang) said that graphics processors especially are important to a new paradigm. Elimination of bottlenecks can speed up the process and create advantages in getting to the goal.”
2. “Nvidia is a one trick pony…Accelerated computing is liberating, … Let’s say you have an airplane that has to deliver a package. It takes 12 hours to deliver it. Instead of making the plane go faster, concentrate on how to deliver the package faster, look at 3D printing at the destination.” The object “… is to deliver the goal faster.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huang%27s_law
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Moore
experts%20have%20not%20reached,was%20of%20the%20opposite%20view.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count
New AI Chip Surpasses Nvidia, AMD, and Intel with 20x Faster Speeds and Over 4 Trillion Transistors
Liberal Arts Blog — Gordon Moore (1929–2023): The Law of Smaller, Faster, Cheaper, Better
QUOTE OF THE MONTH — Have you made your own Bible yet?
“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
My spin — then periodically review, re-rank, and exchange your list with those you love. I call this the “Orion Exchange” because seven is about as many as any human can digest at a time. Game?
ATTACHMENTS BELOW:
#1 A graphic guide to justice (9 metaphors on one page).
#2 “39 Songs, Prayers, and Poems: the Keys to the Hearts of Seven Billion People” — Adams House Senior Common Room Presentation, (11/17/20)
NB: Palestine Orion (Decision) — let’s exchange Orions, let’s find Rumi’s field (“Beyond all ideas of right and wrong, there is a field. Meet me there” Rumi 13 century Persian Sufi mystic)
Last four years of posts organized thematically:
YOUR TURN
Please share the coolest thing you learned this week related to math, statistics, or numbers in general.
Or, even better, the coolest or most important thing you learned in your life related to math.
This is your chance to make someone else’s day. And to consolidate in your memory something you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply than otherwise about something dear to your heart. Continuity is key to depth of thought.
