The Future of AI Chips with Tenstorrent's Keith Witek

On this episode of FYI, ARK’s Chief Futurist Brett Winton and Next Generation Internet Director of Research Frank Downing sit down with Keith Witek, the Chief Operating Officer of Tenstorrent. With over 20 years in the chip industry, Keith shares his insights on the rapidly evolving AI chip landscape, the significance of RISC-V[1] architecture, and the strategic moves that set Tenstorrent apart from industry giants like NVIDIA. This conversation explores the complexities of artificial intelligence (AI) compute, the role of open-source development, and the potential for innovation within the semiconductor industry.

Key Points From This Episode:

- Overview of Keith Witek's career in the chip industry
- Importance of AI chips in boosting productivity for knowledge workers
- The role of RISC-V architecture in Tenstorrent's strategy
- Challenges and opportunities in the AI compute market
- Comparison between Tenstorrent and NVIDIA's AI chip approaches
- The significance of open-source development in AI
- Strategic insights on the semiconductor industry's future
- Tenstorrent's unique business model and its implications
- The potential for RISC-V to disrupt existing chip markets
- Predictions for the AI hardware market by the end of the decade

[1] RISC-V (pronounced risk-five) is an open standard instruction set architecture based on established reduced instruction set computer principles. Unlike most other ISA designs, RISC-V is provided under royalty-free open-source licenses.


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[bobsalita]

Enjoyed listening to the biz considerations of chip biz.

[mfpears]

18:00 Innovator's Dilemma
Always appreciate references to this as opposed to vague "disruptive innovation" that I don't even know fits the actual formula or not

[csu]

GREAT VID DCUD EWAA KEEP THE GREAT WORK

[TheJoMoVO]

The RISC-V architecture has great potential and is growing in application.

[luisbarbosa]

One of the most important companies to invest in, as they have Jim Keller, a transistor development guru, as their CEO. 😎

[txc]

I'm with this guy and Jim and I also noticed he does not wanna say the word *Intel*

[ps]

Thought I saw Phillip Seymour Hoffman for a split second.

[tsclly]

Frank.. why is it that you resemble 'the Talking Head' of the 1980's pilot "MaxHeadroom"? And NVidia is on a roll, but going from 32bit to 4 bit inference and converting backwards will essentially accumulate error at an exponential rate and it is little wonder that AMD has not gone down this path very far, well as far as NVIDIA has and seems to be aiming at the rebound backwards and the consumer market.. while MicroSoft has directly applied digital logic and no blackout on their core model until it come up for a upper 'core' review process.. reminds me of 'predictive execution' that RISC-V seems to avoid... and the buffer hacks that have been exposed.. ARM has just been taken out.. an unfixable backdoor.

[mandolorian]

Nvidia started out building on RISC so good luck

[ZeZeBatata]

Not looking good for Tenstorrent. ARK is the angel of death when it comes to business and investment.

[matthewpope]

I have a difficult time thinking this guy is credible