Jim Keller has an interesting proposition on NVIDIA's Blackwell GPUs, claiming that the firm should've utilized an alternative cost-efficient interconnect method.
Jim Keller Believes NVIDIA Could've Saved Billions In R&D Costs On Blackwell GPU Architecture
Well, Tenstorrent's CEO Jim Keller is known for some of *fun* his takes on tech products. Recently, he called NVIDIA's CUDA a swamp, too, so you can imagine how he pans out on social media. Jim has now criticized Team Green's R&D budget for their Blackwell GPUs, claiming that the company would've saved billions by simply changing the interconnect method. You can see it in his tweet on X below:
— Jim Keller (@jimkxa) April 11, 2024
In terms of the Blackwell interconnect, NVIDIA has utilized their 5th Generation "NVLINK" interconnect technology. While NVLINK has significant advantages over other methods in terms of bandwidth, latency, and scalability, it lags due to its "proprietary" nature, which can't cater to any other manufacturers' hardware.
Moreover, the utilization of NVLINK is said to be a high-cost move in industry dynamics, which is why Jim Keller has criticized it, especially since he promotes an "open-source" ideology for the markets, but NVLINK is the exact opposite here.
Blackwell GPUs Cost Around $30K-$40K, $10 Billion Development Cost For The Fastest AI Chip On The Planet 1" width="2434" height="1440" />
Now, the alternative, in this case, is Ethernet interconnect, which is a more cost-effective option and destroys the proprietary state of NVLINK, ultimately providing a much better ecosystem, but in terms of the performance figures, Ethernet needs to do a look at catching up to Team Green's NVLINK combined with InfiniBand, but with UE (Ultra Ethernet) interconnect in the way, things could potentially change here, fueling the standard's adoption, since UE guarantees effective AI and HPC performance. However, it is still in the development phase.
Jim Keller believes that NVIDIA's whopping $10 billion R&D costs on Blackwell are too much, and the company could have significantly reduced it by simply changing interconnect. Jim is known to troll companies, especially NVIDIA, multiple times, but his claim does sound viable to an extent, as Blackwell's costs are simply outrageous.
But despite what you may say about NVIDIA's Blackwell AI GPU costs, there's no doubt that the demand for these chips is sky-high & even companies such as Intel and AMD are having a hard time breaking NVIDIA's dominance which has only been accelerated with the announcement of Blackwell.
About the author: Muhammad Zuhair is a hardware and technology reporter for Wccftech, specializing in the semiconductor industry and the complex interplay between technology, manufacturing, and geopolitics. His coverage focuses on the corporate strategies and technological roadmaps of industry giants like TSMC, NVIDIA, Samsung, and Intel. Zuhair's expertise lies in deconstructing complex topics such as fabrication nodes (e.g., 2nm process), the economic impact of policies like the CHIPS Act, and the strategic development of AI infrastructure from NVIDIA, AMD and Intel.
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