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YC is wrong about LLMs for chip design

(www.zach.be)
317 points laserduck | 1 comments | 16 Nov 24 14:07 UTC | HN request time: 0.214s | source
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raydiak ◴[16 Nov 24 18:33 UTC] No.42158132[source]▶
The way I read that, I think they're saying hardware acceleration of specific algorithms can be 100 times faster and more efficient than the same algorithm in software on a general purpose processor, and since automated chip design has proven to be a difficult problem space, maybe we should try applying AI there so we can have a lower bar to specialized hardware accelerators for various tasks.

I do not think they mean to say that an AI would be 100 times better at designing chips than a human, I assume this is the engineering tradeoff they refer to. Though I wouldn't fault anyone for being confused, as the wording is painfully awkward and salesy.

replies(1): >>42158308 #
1. erikpukinskis ◴[16 Nov 24 18:54 UTC] No.42158308[source]▶
That’s my read too, if I’m being generous.

I also think OP is missing the point saying the target applications are too small of a market to be worth pursuing.

They’re too small to pursue any single one as the market cap for a company, but presumably the fictional AI chip startup could pursue many of these smaller markets at once. It would be a long tail play, wouldn’t it?