With OpenAI, there are no allegiances - just compute at all costs

No longer bound to Microsoft's infrastructure, OpenAI is looking to expand its network of compute providers to the likes of Oracle, CoreWeave, and apparently even rival model builder Google. But while OpenAI may have set up shop at the Chocolate Factory, it won't be using Google's home-grown tensor processing units (TPUs) to …

[IGotOut]

Good for them...

...given that they got a massive discount using MS for effectively selling all their IP in return, yet spent cash at a rate a small nation would struggle to match, with higher costs, hopefully they will go under even faster.

[Wiretrip]

Tip

Buy AMD stock now. Since ROCm is now a mature competitor to CUDA and being supported by more and more model platforms, I would expect people to move from the overpriced Nvidia offerings. This is the last chance before the AI bubble bursts in disappointment sometime next year...

[HuBo]

Sounds reasonable

Yeah, well, OpenAI's competitor, Ilya Sutskever's SSI, is apparently already "partnering with Google Cloud to use TPUs to accelerate its research and development efforts toward building a safe, superintelligent AI" so it does makes sense that the ChatGPT and o3 maker may want to ensure it doesn't get left behind in the dust on this, eating SSI's shorts in shame, and all ...

The TPUv7 Ironwood (apparently made with MediaTek rather than Broadcom) sure is the one to watch out for here, with its (afaik) reconfigurable optical ICI, solid performance ("same ball parks as Nvidia’s Blackwell B200"), and hopefully good power efficiency too. It was announced just 2-3 months ago and I'm not sure it's out yet (not listed as a TPU version in this Google cloud site).

And prior TPUs are not that good (except maybe for getting one's feet wet into the tech ...) with TPU v5p a 2-gens old device and TPU-v6e an "efficiency"-oriented device iiuc. So, yeah, I imagine OpenAI will use TPUv7 for all its worth, especially if that makes 'em less available for the Sutskevers of this world to quickly develop their own (potentially safer) competing tech! (do as much evil as possible, and then some!)