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pantalaimonyesterday at 10:18 PM3 repliesview on HN

They don't need to be space grade, consumer hardware will do just fine.

For AI a random bit flip doesn't matter much.


Replies

q3kyesterday at 10:28 PM

Only if that bitflip happens somewhere in your actual data, vs. some GPU pipeline register that then locks up the entire system until a power cycle. Or causes a wrong address to be fetched. Or causes other nasty silent errors. Or...

Try doing fault injection on a chip some time. You'll see it's significantly easier to cause a crash / reset / hang than to just flip data bits.

'rad-triggered bit flips don't matter with AI' is a lie spoken by people who have obviously never done any digital design in their life.

gbrielyesterday at 10:34 PM

As long as they stay below Van Allen belts and deal with weaker magnetic shielding in sun synchronous orbit (high latitudes).

I would say they probably something a little beefier than consumer hardware and just deal with lots of failures and bit flips.

But cooling is a bigger issue probably?

ohyoutravelyesterday at 10:26 PM

Random bit flips might even improve output.

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