• Aria@lemmygrad.ml
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        5 days ago

        You can run llama.cpp on CPU. LLM inference doesn’t need any features only GPUs typically have, that’s why it’s possible to make even simpler NPUs that can still run the same models. GPUs just tend to be faster. If the GPU in question is not faster than an equally priced CPU, you should use the CPU (better OS support).

        Edit: I looked at a bunch real-world prices and benchmarks, and read the manual from Huawei and my new conclusion is that this is the best product on the market if you want to run a model at modest speed that doesn’t fit in 32GB but does in 96GB. Running multiple in parallel seems to range from unsupported to working poorly, so you should only expect to use one.

        Original rest of the comment, made with the assumption that this was slower than it is, but had better drivers:
        The only benefit to this product over CPU is that you can slot multiple of them and they parallelise without needing to coordinate anything with the OS. It’s also a very linear cost increase as long as you have the PCIe lanes for it. For a home user with enough money for one or two of these, they would be much better served spending the money on a fast CPU and 256GB system RAM.

        If not AI, then what use case do you think this serves better?

        • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.mlOP
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          5 days ago

          The point is that the GPU is designed for parallel computation. This happens to be useful for graphics, AI, and any other problem that can be expressed as a lot of independent calculations that can be executed in parallel. It’s a completely different architecture from a traditional CPU. This particular card is meant for running LLM models, and it will do it orders of magnitude faster than running this stuff on a CPU.

      • interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml
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        7 days ago

        For 2000$ it “claims” to do 140 TOPS of INT8
        When a Intel Core Ultra 7 265K does 33 TOPS of INT8 for 284$

        Don’t get me wrong, I would LOVE to buy a chinese GPU at a reasonnable price but this isn’t even price competitive with CPUs let alone GPUs.

    • Aria@lemmygrad.ml
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      5 days ago

      I agree with your conclusion, but these are LPDDR4X, not DDR4 SDRAM. It’s significantly faster. No fans should also be seen as a positive, since they’re assuming the cards aren’t going to melt. It costs them very little to add visible active cooling to a 1000+ euro product.

        • Aria@lemmygrad.ml
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          5 days ago

          That’s still faster than your expensive RGB XMP gamer RAM DDR5 CPU-only system, and you can depending on what you’re running saturate the buses independently, doubling the speed and matching a 5060 or there about. I disagree that you can categorise the speed as negating the capacity, as they’re different axis. You can run bigger models on this. Smaller models will run faster on a cheaper Nvidia. You aren’t getting 5080 performance and 6x the RAM for the same price, but I don’t think that’s a realistic ask either.