Comment by jacquesm
7 hours ago
In a way it is, but I would see that as a starting point, not as the ready solution. They'd need to do what NV has done for their eco-system: fantastic libraries, a credible future upgrade path, easy ordering, manufacturing partnerships, the works. I figure besides the performance gap that they are at least 5 to 10 years behind NV with their present offering. But NVidia is dropping stitches and IBM should take advantage of that.
I think IBM sees the Spyre as a reason to sell more Power hardware but that's just not where the industry is right now and I doubt it will be enough to create sufficient demand. Who knows, I don't have any insight in what they're doing there, but there is massive gap between A GB300 workstation and what IBM currently offers. At the same time: the RAM crunch hits all parties and that's a major obstacle as well.
Yeah. For all the jokes we make about paperclip maximizer, we've figured it out. It's not paperclips, it's RAM.
That's the thing though. Software is cheap with AI, but Nvidia has Cuda. If software doesn't matter anymore (it does) because it's so cheap now, then Nvidia's moat evaporates to IBM's Spyre. In reality "just a little bit of software" has inertia and cannot be dislodged quickly, quietly, or easily. cf Microsoft.
That. And not starting every sale with 'call us' where they first want you to tell them how much you can afford to spend. I buy a fair amount of gear and if the sales process starts with some sleazeball sales guy instead of a mouseclick on a local webshop then I'm out.
As for CUDA: I think CUDA is a formidable moat but I also think that that is precisely the kind of thing where the likes of IBM could (if they really wanted to) make things happen. They're already in the space with Redhat and they have ample knowledge about drivers and low level code. Putting together a team that either makes a drop-in replacement or alternatively, that starts supporting their custom hardware for the big players in the inference space (VLLM, llama.cpp and Torch) would make all the difference. They'd have to keep doing it though, even if the initial results were lower than expected because that market is not going to turn on a dime.