alt Hacker NewsSo I’ve been wondering about “one or two levels back” chip design. If I understand it, 28nm chips (pre EUV) is just about suitable to run (not train just inference) frontier models.
And so if I was a mid-level State would it be worth while to take my nascent chip industry and push it out to build a 28nm foundry and supporting eco-system.
The models will come but the real challenge of the future is having enough compute power for every one and every use. Even if LLMs don’t become AGI they will still be incredible tools - and as OpenAI seems to spend 8000 for each 200 monthly subscription building one’s own data centres seems sensible
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You are underestimating how difficult it is even for a large nation state to attract the kind of talent and investment it would take to set up a chip industry. It is out of reach for anyone outside of the 3-5 largest national economies and a few big American/Chinese multinational corporations.
> Even if LLMs don’t become AGI they will still be incredible tools
(Mostly an aside, but: LLMs have paved the way, now the problem is there, it is a challenge and a geopolitically relevant race... AGI is a goal set: hot-having-reached-it will be just a stage.)