Article: Impressions of Kepler
By: Alex L. (alex.delete@this.hotmail.com), April 20, 2012 3:41 pm
Room: Moderated Discussions
Russell Baker on 4/18/12 wrote:
> 1. Nvidia will release a Tesla board based on GK104 that will not have ECC for both DRAM and on-chip SRAM.
Tesla sales are hundreds of millions of dollars per year. The cost of making a derivative of GK104 with ECC for both DRAM and on-chip SRAM is under ten million dollars, assuming ECC is the only addition. The management of Nvidia would have to be a bunch of idiots to sell a Tesla board without ECC for both DRAM and on-chip SRAM. I don't think the management of Nvidia is a bunch of idiots so I think this prediction is wrong.
> 2. Someone in the financial industry will use that Tesla board for Black-Scholes
> option pricing or some other calculation used for algorithmic trading.
>
> 3. A soft error will occur in the on-chip SRAM of the Tesla board which will cause
> a stock market "flash crash" just like when the Dow dropped 600 points in 5 minutes
> on May 6, 2010 due to algorithmic trading.
These predictions are plausible if prediction 1 is true but I think prediction 1 is wrong.
> 4. Nvidia will say "We're so sorry. We never imagined this could happen."
About 18 years ago, Intel had a bug in the floating point divide instruction of their Pentium microprocessor. Although Intel's bug was a hard error, the situation for the end-user was similar in that the chip occasionally produced the wrong answer. Intel was in denial for months. They claimed errors would be very rare. Most customers didn't want a computing chip that made any errors. Eventually, Intel took a $475M charge against earnings and admitted that they screwed up.
> 1. Nvidia will release a Tesla board based on GK104 that will not have ECC for both DRAM and on-chip SRAM.
Tesla sales are hundreds of millions of dollars per year. The cost of making a derivative of GK104 with ECC for both DRAM and on-chip SRAM is under ten million dollars, assuming ECC is the only addition. The management of Nvidia would have to be a bunch of idiots to sell a Tesla board without ECC for both DRAM and on-chip SRAM. I don't think the management of Nvidia is a bunch of idiots so I think this prediction is wrong.
> 2. Someone in the financial industry will use that Tesla board for Black-Scholes
> option pricing or some other calculation used for algorithmic trading.
>
> 3. A soft error will occur in the on-chip SRAM of the Tesla board which will cause
> a stock market "flash crash" just like when the Dow dropped 600 points in 5 minutes
> on May 6, 2010 due to algorithmic trading.
These predictions are plausible if prediction 1 is true but I think prediction 1 is wrong.
> 4. Nvidia will say "We're so sorry. We never imagined this could happen."
About 18 years ago, Intel had a bug in the floating point divide instruction of their Pentium microprocessor. Although Intel's bug was a hard error, the situation for the end-user was similar in that the chip occasionally produced the wrong answer. Intel was in denial for months. They claimed errors would be very rare. Most customers didn't want a computing chip that made any errors. Eventually, Intel took a $475M charge against earnings and admitted that they screwed up.
Topic | Posted By | Date |
---|---|---|
First impressions of Nvidia's Kepler | David Kanter | 2012/03/22 06:00 PM |
First impressions of Nvidia's Kepler | fellix | 2012/03/23 01:25 AM |
First impressions of Nvidia's Kepler | Mike | 2012/03/23 08:24 AM |
First impressions of Nvidia's Kepler | David Kanter | 2012/03/23 09:02 AM |
First impressions of Nvidia's Kepler | Mike | 2012/03/23 09:34 AM |
First impressions of Nvidia's Kepler | David Kanter | 2012/03/23 12:15 PM |
First impressions of Nvidia's Kepler | anon | 2012/03/23 11:37 AM |
I use ALUs | Mark Roulo | 2012/03/23 12:59 PM |
I use ALUs | anon | 2012/03/23 02:07 PM |
I use ALUs | Mark Roulo | 2012/03/23 03:12 PM |
I use ALUs | anon | 2012/03/23 04:08 PM |
Makes no sense... | EduardoS | 2012/03/23 05:30 PM |
Makes no sense... | anon | 2012/03/23 06:14 PM |
Makes no sense... | David Kanter | 2012/03/25 10:45 AM |
Makes no sense... | fellix | 2012/03/24 05:41 AM |
Comparing against the 560 | Cat | 2012/03/26 08:51 AM |
Comparing against the 560 | David Kanter | 2012/03/26 09:24 AM |
Shuffle Instruction | Martin | 2012/03/27 06:17 AM |
Shuffle Instruction | David Kanter | 2012/03/27 08:47 AM |
Shuffle Instruction | Martin | 2012/03/27 10:52 AM |
.msi unarchiver? | hobold | 2012/03/28 10:20 AM |
.msi unarchiver? | Joe | 2012/03/28 12:55 PM |
.msi unarchiver? | Martin | 2012/03/29 12:53 AM |
Shuffle Instruction | Rohit | 2012/03/27 12:04 PM |
Workgroups vs. warps/wavefronts | Andrew McDonald | 2012/03/28 02:31 PM |
Workgroups vs. warps/wavefronts | David Kanter | 2012/03/28 03:14 PM |
Workgroups vs. warps/wavefronts | Rohit | 2012/03/28 08:53 PM |
Workgroups vs. warps/wavefronts | Lee Howes | 2012/03/29 06:38 AM |
Threads | David Kanter | 2012/04/09 11:36 AM |
Fixed (NT) | David Kanter | 2012/04/09 11:37 AM |
Heterogeneous GPUs | Oscar Eddington | 2012/03/28 07:41 PM |
Heterogeneous GPUs | Gary M. | 2012/04/06 04:35 PM |
Different shader cores | David Kanter | 2012/04/09 11:29 AM |
Different shader cores | Tom | 2012/04/11 02:36 PM |
Nope... | David Kanter | 2012/04/12 01:10 AM |
Nope... | Tom | 2012/04/13 03:58 PM |
Nope... | David Kanter | 2012/04/14 12:24 PM |
Load balancing between Tesla and graphics boards | Tom | 2012/04/15 06:11 PM |
Load balancing between Tesla and graphics boards | David Kanter | 2012/04/15 10:11 PM |
Load balancing between Tesla and graphics boards | Anon | 2012/04/16 05:05 PM |
Why isn't AMD hardware used for GPU computing? | Richard G. | 2012/04/03 07:39 PM |
Why isn't AMD hardware used for GPU computing? | anon | 2012/04/04 03:11 AM |
Why isn't AMD hardware used for GPU computing? | Soupdragon | 2012/04/04 05:24 AM |
Why isn't AMD hardware used for GPU computing? | Groo | 2012/04/04 08:41 AM |
Why isn't AMD hardware used for GPU computing? | Michael S | 2012/04/04 06:24 AM |
Why isn't AMD hardware used for GPU computing? | Alexko | 2012/04/04 08:43 AM |
Why isn't AMD hardware used for GPU computing? | EduardoS | 2012/04/04 03:37 PM |
Why isn't AMD hardware used for GPU computing? | David Kanter | 2012/04/09 02:51 PM |
Why isn't AMD hardware used for GPU computing? | Ricardo B | 2012/04/04 12:57 PM |
Why isn't AMD hardware used for GPU computing? | Tom | 2012/04/04 05:36 PM |
Why isn't AMD hardware used for GPU computing? | Brett | 2012/04/04 06:55 PM |
Why isn't AMD hardware used for GPU computing? | David Kanter | 2012/04/09 02:55 PM |
Predictions about Kepler | Russell Baker | 2012/04/18 02:09 PM |
Predictions about Kepler | 0100010 | 2012/04/18 03:14 PM |
Predictions about Kepler | EduardoS | 2012/04/18 03:38 PM |
Predictions about Kepler | Anon | 2012/04/18 08:48 PM |
Predictions about Kepler | EduardoS | 2012/04/19 03:03 PM |
Predictions about Kepler | Meeps | 2012/04/19 03:39 PM |
Predictions about Kepler | John P. | 2012/04/18 06:13 PM |
Predictions about Kepler | Foo_ | 2012/04/19 12:15 PM |
Predictions about Kepler | EduardoS | 2012/04/19 03:07 PM |
Predictions about Kepler | Groo | 2012/04/19 09:13 AM |
Predictions about Kepler | anon | 2012/04/19 03:26 PM |
Predictions about Kepler | Groo | 2012/04/20 08:01 AM |
Predictions about Kepler | Alex L. | 2012/04/20 03:41 PM |
Predictions about Kepler | Anon | 2012/04/21 09:34 AM |
Predictions about Kepler | mpx | 2012/04/21 11:23 PM |
Predictions about Kepler | ac | 2012/04/22 01:49 AM |