Video wird geladen...

Video konnte nicht geladen werden

Zur Startseite

🎨 Now we can use ZBrush (like) sculpting tools with Gaussian Splats! Just made GPU-accelerated sculpt brushes for real-time splat editing splats: 🖐️ Smudge - Push splats like digital clay 🤏 Pinch - Pull splats inward (SHIFT shortcut) ✋ Move - Gentle repositioning, SHIFT for straight lines 📐 Flatten...

22,653 Aufrufe • vor 8 Monaten •via X (Twitter)

0 Kommentare

Keine Kommentare verfügbar

Kommentare vom Original-Post werden hier angezeigt

Ähnliche Videos

3D scanning and rendering is moving so fast - got my splats up and running and I'm mind blown getting ~100fps for this complex 3D scene ⬇️ 🤯 1. WAY faster than NeRF: For comparison, NeRFs would takes around 10 seconds per frame (!) Instead I'm zipping around with FPV controls without breaking a sweat - though I do crash a few times towards the end of the video lol 2. Old Meets New: Gaussian Splatting is cool in that it fuses classical graphics and deep learning techniques. Like NeRFs, this is still a radiance field - just without the slower (ne)ural rendering part. 3. Explicit Representation: Instead you represent a 3D scene as a collection of ellipsoidal "splats" called gaussians. Each gaussian has a position, size, and color. Rendering in real-time is done by projecting into the image plane and alpha blending. 4. Photorealistic Effects: Gaussian splatting use spherical harmonics to represent the view-dependent effects and lighting - allowing surfaces to change color when viewed from different angles, enabling greater photorealism. It doesn't use a neural network, but the training loop is similar to deep learning. 5. Enables Direct Editing: But it's not just speed - with Gaussian Splatting you also get 3D editing support! So you can select, move, and delete stuff, even relight stuff. This type of editing has been more tedious to do with NeRFs and their implicit black box representations. 📲 More tests cooking! Much more to unpack here including simpler explanations. If you enjoyed this post, you might enjoy my feed: Bilawal Sidhu

Bilawal Sidhu

337,090 Aufrufe • vor 3 Jahren

𝗗𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗠𝗲𝗺𝗼𝗿𝘆 𝗩𝗶𝗲𝘄𝗲𝗿: Because I almost always have some gear with me—a drone, a mirrorless camera, or at least a phone—I can capture scenes on the spur of the moment. Here I am freely flying through 3D Gaussian Splats scenes trained from these impromptu captures. It has been several years now since I've developed a real passion for 3D scanning, photogrammetry, and—for the last two and a half years—radiance fields. We actively use these technologies on a professional level at Dpt. , but this is also a personal passion of mine. I love capturing scenes, places, people, moments in time—memories. I enjoy the process of doing it; yes, capturing several hundreds of photos at a time, going in circles around a 'subject' for 15 minutes—all of which can drive my family nuts when they're with me. I have fun pre-processing, aligning, and using datasets to finally see those memories form and then be able to explore them freely in real-time. This week, Meta announced Hyperscape during this year's Meta Connect event… "𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘢𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘧 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦, 𝘸𝘦’𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘮𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵, 𝘵𝘰𝘰. 𝘞𝘦’𝘳𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘬𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘱𝘩𝘰𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘤 𝘴𝘱𝘢𝘤𝘦𝘴 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘢𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘦, 𝘦𝘯𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘧𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥 𝘯𝘦𝘸 𝘸𝘢𝘺 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘦 𝘵𝘰𝘨𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘪𝘯 𝘴𝘱𝘢𝘤𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘬 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘧𝘦𝘦𝘭 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶’𝘳𝘦 𝘱𝘩𝘺𝘴𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦—𝘸𝘦 𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘪𝘵 𝘏𝘺𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘤𝘢𝘱𝘦." …it's exciting to see major players like Meta pushing the boundaries of immersive experiences. Their announcement of Hyperscape resonates deeply with the work I've been doing and my passion for capturing and recreating photorealistic environments and memories. It feels like we're all moving toward a future where the lines between the physical and digital worlds blur, allowing us to share spaces and moments in unprecedented ways. I'm thrilled to be contributing my own explorations to this ever-evolving field. The attached video is a screen recording of myself exploring and flying through volumetric captures—dormant memories—in real-time using an app I crafted for this purpose. The first part shows me moving from one memory to another (btw, this works in tethered VR), and in the second part of the video at , I explore two memories simultaneously, rendering two 3D Gaussian Splats of the same location onto two monitors. #gaussiansplatting #radiancefield #digitaltwin #hyperscape #memories

Hugues Bruyère

16,333 Aufrufe • vor 1 Jahr

Fast Company just published a great piece on World Labs , Fei-Fei Li , Marble, and the idea that spatial intelligence / world models may be one of the next big shifts in AI. I was happy to be quoted in the article, but I also wanted to share more context about my own experience with World Labs and Marble, and why this direction is especially interesting to me. My starting point: volumetric capture — For the past few years I’ve been exploring and using volumetric capture and reconstruction (photogrammetry, NeRFs, 3D Gaussian Splats) mostly capturing locations around Montreal. Alleys, museums, urban interiors. I love every step of it: the capture itself, the pipeline, and what can be done with the output. Turning real spaces into real-time explorable systems. I do this personally, sharing explorations here, and professionally as chief technologist, and co-founder of Dpt. Physical reality + generative manipulation — In my work I’m especially drawn to mixing physical reality with generative and digital manipulation: using physical interfaces (light, clay, ink, ... ) to drive generative AI pipelines, building mixed reality prototypes that reshape your surroundings, or starting from real captured spaces and transforming them using tools like Marble. Like many people, I saw the World Labs announcement on Twitter in September 2024, and Marble when it surfaced in early December. But by then, I already had a sense something was coming. The first conversation — As someone deep into volumetric capture and radiance fields, I obviously knew about Ben Mildenhall and his pioneering work on NeRF. To my surprise, Ben reached out to me in late June 2024. He’d been following some of my experiments and wanted to chat about my process and workflows and how I was using this “stuff” creatively. At that point he didn’t share what he was building, but we had a genuinely great conversation about radiance fields, AI, and my work. He was curious about the creative perspective, not just the technical one. When the World Labs announcement dropped a few months later, it all made sense. I understood what Ben had been working on, and why the creative angle mattered to them. Then in August 2025, he invited me to try the Marble beta, and I’ve been experimenting with it since. Experimenting with Marble — The first thing I used Marble for was materializing scene and world concepts during ideation at the studio, and seeing if and how it could fit into our production pipeline. In parallel, I dove into a series of experiments focused on world manipulation: starting from real captured spaces and transforming them using Marble. I’d already been exploring that idea using img2img diffusion with ControlNet on NeRF renders, real-time video streams, and even mixed reality using headset camera feeds. But Marble brings something different. It generates persistent, spatially cohesive 3D worlds that can be rendered in real time across a wide range of devices. That’s a real shift. Experiment 01: Parallel Realities — The first experiment, Parallel Realities, starts from a volumetric capture of a real location, reconstructed as 3D Gaussian Splats. Using Marble, I generate an alternate version of that same space, something informed by the original architecture: abandoned, nature-reclaimed, alternate era. Then, using Spark (World Labs’ 3D Gaussian Splatting renderer for THREE.js) I make both realities coexist in the same spatial coordinate system. From there, I use a portal UX mechanic to let the user step between the real reconstruction and the Marble-generated version. Experiment 02: Hidden Depth The second experiment, Hidden Depth, does not transform a space as much as expand it. A captured location has a visual boundary (a mural, a doorway, a dark corridor) and Marble generates what exists beyond it. For example: a Montreal alley has a painted mural; step through it and you’re inside a world informed by what is actually depicted there. World Labs showcased part of this work here: And in their Spark 2.0 post: The project page is here: Why this matters to me — Being able to start from a real 3D Gaussian Splat scene and manipulate it with Marble opens up a lot of ideas. The 3DGS pipeline is becoming an increasingly compelling foundation for exploration, experimentation, and storytelling. What matters most to me right now is more control. The more I can steer the generated scene or world, the more useful the tool becomes. I want more features like the already existing multiple input images and Chisel, the blockout-based approach. I would like better local control, the ability to expand a generated world more and more while preserving coherence, and the ability to directly import 3D Gaussian Splat scenes to be used as a starting point. I want more ways to shape the result, not just a “prompt and hope” approach. — It is exciting to see this field moving from research and demos toward actual creative workflows.

Hugues Bruyère

69,960 Aufrufe • vor 2 Monaten

"Hah - generative ai can't even make an image of a hand with the right number of fingers.." "Stop pushing this slop" It's way past the point now where it must be clear to everyone, that generative ai is here to stay AND that the quality will continue to increase. I've been talking about this trajectory for years now, and I've been working towards finding ways to combine the strength of these models, with the best of what I love about "old-school" creation. Building with my hands, moving a pencil across the paper and seeing shapes emerge, moving a building slightly to the right to get just that composition I had in mind. Being fully immersed in a scene I'm building in VR, being inspired by the immersion to take the story in a new direction. For years I've been talking about how powerful the combination of 3d and generative ai is, be it traditional 3d, SDF volumes in Dreams or Gaussian splats - with experiments around using V2V as a "render pass" or with experiments around realtime ai. Enough talk you might think, where's the proof? It's all around us these days honestly and here's a small test I did during some OOO. Blender MPC + Fable - a pretty powerful combination! With a bit of Google Omni Fast on top as a "render" pass. What do you think of where this is heading? Hopeful, disheartened, inspired or the opposite? Can you imagine working with tools like this in a way where we still retain the human "spark" and the creative nerve that makes each persons creation unique?

Martin Nebelong

49,395 Aufrufe • vor 1 Monat

So these researchers figured out you can basically hallucinate 3D cities into existence using just satellite photos & a diffusion model. The problem's pretty straightforward: satellites only see rooftops. Building facades? Invisible. Street-level detail? Doesn't exist. But people want flyable 3D environments, which means you need all that occluded geometry. When I worked on google maps photogrammetry, we could only use satellite-based 3D for isolated stuff like the pyramids - anything city-scale required airplane flyovers. Which is fine until you hit aerial-denied regions where you literally can't fly. Huge chunks of the world just unavailable. Their trick is honestly kind of beautiful. They train gaussian splats on satellite views, but as it descends toward ground level, the renders turn to absolute garbage - artifacts everywhere. Instead of fighting this, they just treat those nightmare renders as the input to a diffusion model. Basically - "hey FLUX, fix this mess." Then here's where it gets clever: they generate multiple diffusion samples per view instead of committing to one. Because any single denoising path is probably wrong in 3D space, but if you generate a couple and let the GS optimization find consensus across them, you get actual geometric consistency. They do this in episodes, curriculum style - start high, gradually descend (hence the name Skyfall-GS!). With each iteration the ground-level views get less fucked. By the end you've got real-time flyable cities that look surprisingly real, and the geometry still matches the satellite input. No 3D training data. No street-level photos. Just satellites + diffusion doing what it does best - filling in the blanks. It's like neural scene completion but actually practical, and it unlocks basically the entire world.

Bilawal Sidhu

242,008 Aufrufe • vor 10 Monaten

Video Gaussian Splats are one of the most wonderful things I've experienced in my last year in tech and XR. They are like having a real person in front of you and have the potential to bring people closer to their idols, or their distant family members, or to store immersive memories forever. Now that I have a Dell Pro Max Tower T2 PC with a powerful #NVIDIA graphics card, I have finally been able to try at home the "memories" offered by Gracia AI, and boy, I was amazed. In the PCVR version, you can really get close to the artists dancing and syncing, and in the frames where the recording doesn't have many artifacts, it is almost like having a real artist in front of you. And it is impressive that this technology works even when the singer is dancing with quick movements! But these recordings can be pretty huge (the one with McKenzi Brooke is 21GB!) and require a powerful computer, so now Gracia is also streaming these GS videos, and I was able to try the Amy May performance also on Quest! I have to say that quality-wise, even streamed, they are amazing. But there are more artifacts than in the PC version: I noticed that when I got close to the singer. But there is a huge advantage in having them on Quest: you can see them in mixed reality. It was like having the singer having a private performance for me in my house. Crazy cool! I'll keep experimenting with these performances and maybe write an article in the upcoming weeks. In the meantime, let me know your impressions, too! #VirtualReality #technology #innovation (Disclaimer: I entered the #DellProPrecision ambassador program, so I was provided the PC from Dell, and I'm using it to make some experiments and share them with you. No monetary compensation or affiliate sales programs are involved.)

TonyVT SkarredGhost

12,817 Aufrufe • vor 5 Monaten

🚀 Announcing Echo — our new frontier model for 3D world generation. Echo turns a simple text prompt or image into a fully explorable, 3D-consistent world. Instead of disconnected views, the result is a single, coherent spatial representation you can move through freely. This is part of a bigger shift in AI: from generating pixels and tokens to generating spaces. Echo predicts a geometry-grounded 3D scene at metric scale, meaning every novel view, depth map, and interaction comes from the same underlying world — not independent hallucinations. Once generated, the world is interactive in real time. You control the camera, explore from any angle, and render instantly — even on low-end hardware, directly in the browser. High-quality 3D world exploration is no longer gated by expensive equipment. Under the hood, Echo infers a physically grounded 3D representation and converts it into a renderable format. For our web demo, we use 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) for fast, GPU-friendly rendering — but the representation itself is flexible and can be easily adapted. Why this matters: consistent 3D worlds unlock real workflows — digital twins, 3D design, game environments, robotics simulation, and more. From a single photo or a line of text, Echo builds worlds that are reliable, editable, and spatially faithful. Echo also enables scene editing and restyling. Change materials, remove or add objects, explore design variations — all while preserving global 3D consistency. Editing no longer breaks the world. This is only the beginning. Echo is the foundation for future world models with dynamics, physical reasoning, and richer interaction — environments that don’t just look right, but behave right. Explore the generated worlds on our website and sign up for the closed beta. The era of spatial intelligence starts here. 🌍 #Echo #WorldModels #SpatialAI #3DFoundationModels Check it out:

SpAItial AI

176,903 Aufrufe • vor 9 Monaten

Exciting updates on Project GR00T! We discover a systematic way to scale up robot data, tackling the most painful pain point in robotics. The idea is simple: human collects demonstration on a real robot, and we multiply that data 1000x or more in simulation. Let’s break it down: 1. We use Apple Vision Pro (yes!!) to give the human operator first person control of the humanoid. Vision Pro parses human hand pose and retargets the motion to the robot hand, all in real time. From the human’s point of view, they are immersed in another body like the Avatar. Teleoperation is slow and time-consuming, but we can afford to collect a small amount of data. 2. We use RoboCasa, a generative simulation framework, to multiply the demonstration data by varying the visual appearance and layout of the environment. In Jensen’s keynote video below, the humanoid is now placing the cup in hundreds of kitchens with a huge diversity of textures, furniture, and object placement. We only have 1 physical kitchen at the GEAR Lab in NVIDIA HQ, but we can conjure up infinite ones in simulation. 3. Finally, we apply MimicGen, a technique to multiply the above data even more by varying the *motion* of the robot. MimicGen generates vast number of new action trajectories based on the original human data, and filters out failed ones (e.g. those that drop the cup) to form a much larger dataset. To sum up, given 1 human trajectory with Vision Pro -> RoboCasa produces N (varying visuals) -> MimicGen further augments to NxM (varying motions). This is the way to trade compute for expensive human data by GPU-accelerated simulation. A while ago, I mentioned that teleoperation is fundamentally not scalable, because we are always limited by 24 hrs/robot/day in the world of atoms. Our new GR00T synthetic data pipeline breaks this barrier in the world of bits. Scaling has been so much fun for LLMs, and it's finally our turn to have fun in robotics! We are building tools to enable everyone in the ecosystem to scale up with us. Links in thread:

Jim Fan

364,565 Aufrufe • vor 2 Jahren

We are very sad to share the loss of a member of our NFRSA family. RPD Alfie - ‘Alf’ for short, and who served for an astonishing ten years with WMP Dog Unit and West Midlands Police, slipped away with his tennis ball in his mouth last week and Darryl, his handler, shared his wonderful story. “Alf was gifted to West Midlands Police when he was just 10 months old. The reason given by his then owner (who was in tears) “he was so destructive we can’t do a thing with him. He’s a pain in the arse.” What should’ve been a 6 week course was completed in 4 weeks. Turns out he just needed a job.! Alfie went on to work for 10 years during which time he found numerous amounts of drugs, cash and firearms. On one occasion we arrived for our first early shift of the week. A shooting had occurred during the night in a particularly nice part of Birmingham and Alfie and I were tasked with searching for the outstanding firearm. Arriving at the scene I spoke with the Sgt in charge of the search team. “It’s a massive area full of all kinds of s**t. Could you just run Alf over it to see if he shows any interest anywhere. I’ll be in the van, give us a shout.” In typical Alfie fashion, off he went like a stabbed rat, clambering over all manner of junk only to freeze. He’d found it.!! The Sgt hadn’t even taken the froth off his coffee. No matter what time of day or night, no matter what the weather or search conditions Alfie gave his all. With his wonky front foot to his long whippy tail, he made me laugh everyday, he was a real little character. This was summed up on one particular occasion. Monday morning, refresher training. The instructor “We’ve been asked to give a demo at HQ for some VIPs.” Me “No, I don't do media” Later in the day we found ourselves at HQ in front of 100 or so VIPs, all sat in a lecture theatre waiting to be amazed by one of West Mids finest.! The instructor “I’ve hidden the gear (Drugs) in the electrical socket underneath the main screen so everyone can see him work.” In we go and Alfie goes to work, gradually getting closer & closer to the drugs. Standing on his back legs,front feet on the wall. I’m looking on like a proud Dad. Alfies almost on top of the drugs when all of a sudden he drops what he’s doing and shoots towards the audience, running between legs beneath the chairs towards the buffet..!! Oh dear, I thought.! Alfie, having helped himself to a Somosa came running back whilst struggling to swallow the thing. He then went straight back to the drugs giving a perfect “freeze” indication which got a round of applause from the now hysterical audience..!! I reluctantly gave a “click” for a job well done and he come flying over for his ball. As if things couldn’t get any worse and just for good measure Alfie started rolling around on his back all happy with himself and revealed his “pink lipstick”..!! That was Alfie.🥰🐾 Following retirement Alfie went to many a shoot with my wife Jane and our daughter Milly, retrieving & flushing game birds. He was a natural. He passed with a tennis ball in his mouth just the way he wanted. It was an absolute pleasure and honour to have worked Alfie. He put a smile on my face every single day. RIP Little man❤️” What a little star he was - thank you for your service Alfie. Sweet dreams.

NFRSA

15,328 Aufrufe • vor 7 Monaten

Just in $AMD Anush "Speed is the moat"|ROCm🎙️ In the race to define the future of AI, what's the one advantage that truly lasts? It's not proprietary tech, argues Anush Elangovan Elangovan, VP of AI Software at AMD , but the sustainable speed of innovation. He explains why AMD is rejecting the "walled garden" model for its open source ROCm stack, betting that an open community flywheel is the key to victory. Listen to understand how this open strategy is designed to out-innovate closed systems by empowering developers to solve everything from frontier-model challenges to the mundane, everyday problems that define the "last mile" of AI. AMD ROCm Software: Part 1 Transcript [00:00:00] Andrew Zigler: Joining me is Anush Elangovan, VP of AI software at AMD. And when people talk about AI compute, the conversation often stops at hardware specs, but it's more than just physical chips that win the game. It's also the software ecosystems supporting them. [00:00:18] Andrew Zigler: The prevailing strategy in the industry has been to build something like a walled garden. You know, something closed, proprietary locks, developers in. But AMD is betting on an entirely different play, open source acceleration, and with rock, their open source AI software stack. AMD is building not just hardware parity, but an innovation flywheel that's powered by the community with interoperability and the freedom to scale without all of that pesky lockin. [00:00:48] Andrew Zigler: And in this world, speed is your moat and how fast you can innovate while your platform remains open, flexible, and standardize across all of its applications. That's what we're gonna explore [00:01:00] today. So Anush, I'm really excited to have you here. Welcome to Dev Interrupted. [00:01:04] Anush Elangovan: Thanks for having me. Uh, super excited to chat about it. [00:01:07] Andrew Zigler: Amazing. Well, let's go ahead and dive right in with kind of what I laid it out with in the beginning, the idea of the moat and it being about speed. I wanna unpack that a bit because that came from you when you and I first spoke. And I, and I want to know, you know, how do you define speed inside of AMD beyond just things like hardware, benchmarks. [00:01:27] Anush Elangovan: Yeah, that's a very good question. So when we typically talk about speed, everyone's like, Hey, hardware benchmark specs, right? Like, uh, memory bandwidth or, or flops. And that is one important part of it, uh, AMD does very well. With that, we do have, a, a very good history of executing on that axis. [00:01:47] Anush Elangovan: But when I say speed is the moat, it is about, uh, how we prepare, how we build the muscle to run the race for a long time and run it fast. And it is [00:02:00] not about a single point in time that you've, you've beat some you know, benchmark and, and you declare victory. It's about building the ability to consistently develop and deliver. [00:02:13] Anush Elangovan: Both hardware and software innovation at scale and do it fast, right? Like, you know, we we're increasingly getting to a point where models come out and they're, uh, you know, a year or two ago it was like, Hey, they work on AMD on day zero, which is great, but now they are performing on AMD the day it releases, right? [00:02:32] Anush Elangovan: So, what does it take to Prefetch where the industry is going? Be prepared to intercept. At that point is what you know, I, I refer to as you know, the, the speed factor in, in creating this mode, right? And the mode is just shed all things that hold you back and run as fast as you can. [00:02:53] Anush Elangovan: Uh, because the pace of innovation that is, uh, being seen in, in AI [00:03:00] industries is just. Amazing. Right? And it's like, it's transformational at at how you generate electricity. It's transformational as at how you build data centers. It's transformational at how you deploy compute, networking. It's transformational at what kind of use cases you, you know, uh, use AI for. [00:03:17] Anush Elangovan: Uh, and for that, you need to be prepared to, see what comes tomorrow and be prepared to run the race tomorrow. [00:03:23] Andrew Zigler: Yeah, it's a really great perspective because it highlights that it's not just like a checkpoint that you run through. I like how you called out, like it's not just hitting that benchmark or being the best in class at that moment, in that snapshot, it's about having a. The throughput and about having that dedication to the idea and continuing to deliver on it. [00:03:43] Andrew Zigler: It's not just crossing the threshold, but it's also being the engine. And that's what, that's what protects a business. That is the moat, because the moat is that innovation layer, the faster and more, uh, future forward. That you can work and think, [00:04:00] you know, the better. Uh, we, we talk a lot about like future forward work styles. [00:04:04] Andrew Zigler: Like what are the things I could be doing right now today that are gonna be like, way more useful tomorrow? Let, let's abandon those, workflows that are older and that kind of like, that translates into. An advantage when you work that way. You know, what kind of things have you learned working with, uh, like across all spectrums of people who would use ROCm, right? [00:04:23] Andrew Zigler: You have like the developers, but then you also have the enterprises and you have this large span of adoptees, right? So what is the, what does that look like that you learn? [00:04:32] Anush Elangovan: Yeah, so, so the way I look at it is there are gonna be pockets of different, uh, you know, cadences, right? Like, so people who are deploying in enterprises, for example, right? The validation and how long it takes for them to deploy an LLM that's secure. It's, with guardrails, et cetera, maybe longer. [00:04:52] Anush Elangovan: but you still have to go through the process and you have to be prepared to like, walk that walk to deploy an enterprises. That doesn't mean it's [00:05:00] not fast, that's as fast as you can do for that industry, right? And if you are deploying AI in healthcare, right, it's, it's got its own, uh, cycle. [00:05:07] Anush Elangovan: but in each one of these, you want to see how, like, go down to the essence of what is it that you actually have to do. And, you know, I, I, I like how you framed it. It's like it's, you shed your prior assumptions of how things are done, right. And, and you kind of build up from a, uh, first principles, uh, approach to say, this is how I could use AI to unlock, whatever I'm doing. [00:05:33] Anush Elangovan: And, and, some of it, you know, it's good to really step back and look at. Just question every part of it, right? Like right now you're getting chat GPT and, Gemini competing for like, math, olympiads and, and, uh, college, uh, reasoning, uh, tests. Right? And, and those are like that, that is amazing and increasingly like complex tasks that they're trying to do. [00:05:58] Anush Elangovan: But there may also be like. [00:06:00] More mundane things that AI could, could get applied to. Right? And, and so when we think about shedding old ways, you wanna shed it not just in like the tip of the spear. It's like, you know, I'm gonna see what's the frontier model. It's also, it could be something as simple as. [00:06:18] Anush Elangovan: How do you choose a, a movie, uh, you know, like a recommendation system, right? Or, or, uh, an automated, uh, flight, uh, rebooking system. So the moment, you know, your flight is late, uh, right now it's a notification, right? It's like, oh, you got a text message saying your flight's late. And I got that like three times this week. [00:06:38] Anush Elangovan: But anyway, uh, and, and, and, and, I was just like, okay, so if I were to rethink this. All this MCPs that we have that should be hooked up into an MCP that says, your flight's delayed. Here are your options. If you want, you know, these are the paid options. Yeah. Here are the free options. This will get you back into your you know, Toronto airport [00:07:00] tonight. [00:07:00] Anush Elangovan: Or if you stay, here's a hotel plus this, plus this, plus. It's just like, go ahead is all I should say. Versus now I'm like, okay, can someone, you know, can I call a travel agent? Can I do this? Can I go online and log into And you know, so we gotta fundamentally rethink even those like small, nuances of, things that we do that can be automated out and AI is really, really good at doing something like this, right? Maybe I just explained an AI startup idea right now. Somebody should just start that. [00:07:29] Andrew Zigler: I think you did. Yeah, you definitely did. Someone, one of our listeners is definitely going to lift that off of you. I, I, I, you know, I hate being on the receiving end of those. You feel a little helpless and then you have to like, follow the whole flow. So I know what you mean. Like I, I like how you called out that the build and this like. [00:07:45] Andrew Zigler: Where speed is your moat and the innovation layer is protecting you, is what makes you better than your competitors. How you scale that and you bring that to market. So by understanding the problems that you're solving, uh, throwing away those older assumptions, but also [00:08:00] recognizing that like. We're building every single day, new things and new ways of using stuff that we're still figuring out the implications of. [00:08:08] Andrew Zigler: And so when you have a lot of velocity and you're introducing a lot of new ideas, and maybe you have that workflow now that automatically rebook your flight off of your late flight text message, and uh, I know I would certainly use it, but you know, what kind of philosophies guide the way that y'all think about building this ecosystem to manage that stability while letting folks. [00:08:29] Andrew Zigler: Play with the speed and the assumptions and the airplane re bookings. [00:08:34] Anush Elangovan: so, so I think, you know, we need to peel one layer down, right? and the philosophy is, Hey, we, we just discovered electricity, right? And you know what we're gonna do? We are gonna make motors, uh, or dynamos, right? Like engines. Uh, sure. We don't know if it's gonna be a Ferrari that you're gonna make, or it's a a a a dump truck. [00:08:57] Anush Elangovan: That's good for doing this. But let's [00:09:00] let, which is also required, right? You need a dump truck. You need a garbage truck. And, [00:09:04] Andrew Zigler: Yeah. You need the [00:09:04] Anush Elangovan: course you need, uh, a Ferrari for a midlife crisis, right? So, [00:09:09] Andrew Zigler: precisely. [00:09:10] Anush Elangovan: But, but my, uh, point is what do we build next? And, uh, and this is what I meant by like, okay, let's, let's take those baby steps to build the. [00:09:20] Anush Elangovan: Infrastructure that's required that we know we'll have to use, right? So, so if I just discovered electricity, okay, great. Now one, how do I save this electricity and how do I use it? So there's battery technology, so you need to do something like that, right? Like so. But then you also want to make it into an actionable thing. [00:09:37] Anush Elangovan: You want to make it for like automobiles, or you wanna use it for, you know, powering, uh, entire cities. So it is that transformational. So, uh, AI is that transformational. So, if you distill down, it'll, it'll come down to how do we think about, what we can do with this this fundamental technology that, We may not be aware of what it [00:10:00] is gonna unlock next, but at least you know the next step is clear, right? It's like a dense fog, you know, it's gonna be like, it, it's the right path. You see the light, but it's kind of like out there and, and the steps you're taking are concrete and you're like, okay, this is good. [00:10:16] Anush Elangovan: I, this is better than where I was or where we were. So we are moving forward. So you can build with the. Intuition from what you see in the short term and a tactical view, but towards what you think the future is gonna be. [00:10:28] Andrew Zigler: Right. You almost like we're all in this like fog of war, right? And like you said, you're reaching out and you're trying to step through it. You could think of it too, as like you're in the dark and your hands are up in front of you and you know that. You're, you're not gonna run your face into a wall because your hands are out in front of you, but you're not gonna maybe do much better than that. [00:10:45] Andrew Zigler: So that's kind of like, I think the eco, the, the industry, the world that we find ourselves in, uh, and we all have to, then this becomes the power of an ecosystem, of a group of people working together to create that layer of, [00:11:00] uh, of establishing the [00:11:01] Anush Elangovan: exactly. And I, I, I just, instead of, you know, saying fog of war I describe it as like, you're in this. Beautiful valley with like a morning, uh, fog that's in. You can smell the flowers. You, you hear the birds. You are like, okay, it's, we are in like, uh, utopian paradise and yes, I just need to like, continue the walk, right? [00:11:24] Anush Elangovan: and then move forward with that, conviction that you're in the right spot. [00:11:27] Andrew Zigler: Yeah. So let's talk about that ecosystem world. This nice, I love how you describe it, this grassy side of a hill in the morning that's covered in some mist and maybe we can't see 30 feet in one direction, but it sure is a beautiful hill and it smells nice. And so we're all here. And why is, in that world, why is. [00:11:44] Andrew Zigler: You know, open source, their strategic advantage that y'all are going for in the AI hardware market. And, and then how does like ROCm turn that into wins for people within that ecosystem? [00:11:56] Anush Elangovan: you know, the, the way we look at it is this, is kind of like how I view [00:12:00] AI and the ecosystem, right? But, but it is for everyone to enjoy. Uh, and so we do want to make sure that. You know, it is, uh, beneficial for everyone. [00:12:09] Anush Elangovan: The ecosystem can come in and, and innovate. It's an open innovation engine. and uh, it is very different from, you know, having a walled garden with, Hey, only I know how to do this and I'm gonna do it and throw it over the fence and you can use it or keep walking, right? So we'd like to be good citizens that way, but also. [00:12:30] Anush Elangovan: Uh, it is self-fulfilling in a way, right? Like it, the, the pace at which we innovate with open source is unmatched. Like, you know, our serving engines are like VLLM and, and sg l. Those things, uh, those frameworks are like super, super aggressive in terms of how fast they come out with features and how fast they can you know, get performant models out. [00:12:52] Anush Elangovan: And that compared with what, uh, you'd get from, you know, the likes of like T-R-T-L-L-M or something is always lagging, right? Because you [00:13:00] just can't keep up with you know, 200 commits a week just on one particular model to get that model really performant [00:13:06] Andrew Zigler: And, and, and in that world where, you know, everyone can enjoy the winds of this, what kind of customer stories or innovation stories have really stood out to you and excite you about building and creating this place for developers? [00:13:19] Anush Elangovan: Yeah. So I think the parts that are super exciting for me are when when we get to see a customer that is first skeptical. Then they start a little like, okay, fine, we'll give you a chance. Uh, we do a simple, uh, POC and then they're like, huh, this seems to work. Yeah, we told you it works. [00:13:42] Anush Elangovan: You don't have to change one line of code. Really? Yes, no need to change one line of code. Okay, let's try a production workload. So then they try it. Oh, you're more performant than the competition. Yes. We're more performant than, than the competition. So how much does it cost? And we're like, oh, it's your TCO is better with, uh, [00:14:00] AMD. [00:14:00] Anush Elangovan: So again, they're like, wow, okay, good. So now how do we deploy at scale? And then we go deploy it at scale. And when they give a thumbs up on that and they say, this is good, right? That's when you know, you, you see it go full circle from like, oh, we, we've never heard about AMD to like actually deploy to tens of thousands of GPUs In the order of a few months, right? It, it, it really is fascinating to see and very exciting and invigorating to [00:14:28] Andrew Zigler: Yeah. At like a great exposure to a lot of interesting problems. And, and then people using the infrastructure, the, the technology available to solve those problems. Really specific problems by the way, that's often why they're bringing their data and AI to it, uh, is because it is really specific and important for them. [00:14:45] Andrew Zigler: And there's a, a lot I think that other engineering orgs can learn and even emulate from AMD's success and, and having this open source ecosystem and it causing this acceleration within. You [00:15:00] know, uh, customers and enterprises that use and adopt the tools and, and, and that creates an advantage. And that goes back to why we're talking and like the real thesis of our conversation today. [00:15:10] Andrew Zigler: So how do you think engineering leaders that are listening to this and obviously tapping into this great success AMD has from an open source flywheel, how do you think other, other folks building in the same space can foster that open, first, that open source oriented culture in order to, you know, accelerate their innovation goals? [00:15:29] Anush Elangovan: Yeah, that's a very good question. So the startup that um, was acquired by AMD we, we built, I mean, we started off doing iot stuff and you know, smart ring and all that, right? But in the, the end of like, uh, and not the end, the last six years of the company was building ML compilers. [00:15:47] Anush Elangovan: And ml, ML compilers are like super, uh, complicated, sophisticated, advanced algorithms, dah, dah, dah. but it was all open source, right? So our VCs were like, wait, what do you mean your core [00:16:00] IP is open source? And um, the speed is the moat applied even then, right? It was just like, yes, if you have an idea that. [00:16:08] Anush Elangovan: Because someone saw this idea that you are, they're gonna be able to catch up, then you probably have the wrong idea anyway. But if they are, you know, you execute and they're gonna catch up, that you should assume they're gonna catch up. Right? So you gotta move forward. So keeping it open source is super important. [00:16:25] Anush Elangovan: But also to your question on like, you know, the learnings from an AMD standpoint, right? If there are, hard problems, I'd say dig in and work through it, right? Like there's no way but through it, right? That should be the simple mentality. And more, uh, frequently than not. you'll see that you'll just make it through in a, in, in good form. [00:16:52] Anush Elangovan: But if you doubt it and you're like, oh, I don't know if I should commit, if I'm, I, you know, what should just commit to do the right thing [00:17:00] every step, right? Every step, and just keep taking one step in front of the other. And in no time you'll see that you'll be running. Right. And, and yes, the first few steps will be like, yeah, everyone's complaining about your software quality. [00:17:15] Anush Elangovan: Everyone's complaining about this and that, and it doesn't work. And, and a few steps in, you know, you get, you get the hang of all the complaints that are coming in. You get the feedback loop. You're like, okay, what, what are you prioritizing again? One step in front of the other, right? You just keep knocking that out and then you get to a point where you're, it just becomes second nature, right? To do the, to do the right thing. And, and then yes, if someone gives you two options, you'll be like, fine. This is, uh, you know, there's always the resource trade off. There's always a human capital trade off, but what's the right thing to do? of course, I, I'm pragmatic about what we choose, but, but if the right thing for your long-term success is dig in, go first, principles, make it [00:18:00] happen. [00:18:00] Anush Elangovan: Well. Then just go for that. There's, there is no shortcut to [00:18:04] Andrew Zigler: acknowledging, you know, how it aligns with your mission, your core company goals, and what you're looking to achieve. And, and I, I love how you rightfully called out that in the open source world and you know, you have your technology that you've built, what you think is your moat upon, right? [00:18:22] Andrew Zigler: It's your code and, and to open source that, or to just make it where anyone could peer in is, you know. Scary in one regard, but two, it just kind of feels like you're handing away your throne room in some kind of sense, a very direct feeling sense. But the ultimately, you were really right to call out, and this is something I think about all the time, that the real power there is still the speed This the speed. [00:18:42] Andrew Zigler: That was the moat at the beginning of our conversation. It's the speed in combination with your. Very specific domain understanding of what you're building and what you're creating, and your new role as the steward of that world and how people plug into it, which [00:19:00] has frankly, a lot more influence and power than lording over a closed. [00:19:04] Andrew Zigler: You know, repository or an ecosystem, and like you said, like throwing things over the wall. Sure. There, there might be people always on the other side of that wall, but you're not gonna have a great connection with them. You're not gonna be able to really clearly understand them. I, I like your metaphor of the side of the field of the mountain a lot more. [00:19:23] Andrew Zigler: But, but in the, in this world, you know, where. That speed is, is the power and, and open source is just one way that you can harness that speed to get really far ahead and to innovate. , There's other parts of this equation that you can be experimenting with too, and I'd love to pick your brain about them as a software leader and, and, and one of them is about looking forward and kind of understanding that future that we're all building towards and beyond today's models and hardware. [00:19:48] Andrew Zigler: You know, what do you see as the next major bottleneck or opportunity in the AI compute space? As, as you know, enterprises and folks start to get a little more mature about what's available to [00:20:00] them. [00:20:00] Anush Elangovan: Yeah, I think, the bottleneck and opportunity is, uh, what I'd call, call walking the last mile of ai. Right. Uh, and like I I, I gave you an example, uh, previously, but, but it's similar to that. It's like there are cases where Humans have so many, uh, things to do in your day. You know, like the, if we sit down and actually had a customer focus like, okay, these customers lives, I'm gonna save four hours of this customer's life. And if you actually sit down and look at all of that, it'll be. Easily automatable, easily you know, uh, applicable, uh, for ai, right? [00:20:39] Anush Elangovan: Like, but then making it happen is gonna take a little bit, right? It's like maybe it's, uh, paying your utility bill, right? Or something like that, right? Or, or, your healthcare explanation of benefits. Uh, like, I'm sure you get an explanation of benefits, and I'm like, I, I don't even know what that thing is. [00:20:55] Anush Elangovan: It's just like EOB and like. [00:20:57] Andrew Zigler: it's a big, a big old PDF. Yeah, [00:21:00] exactly. [00:21:01] Anush Elangovan: Like, like, I'm like great straight to the, uh, shredder, right? And but that could be, you know, automated with the ai, right? It, it, it'd be like, Hey, the summary of this thing is you went and visited this day. Everything is okay. Everything is paid for, so don't worry, it's not a bill. [00:21:17] Anush Elangovan: That again, the same, uh, thing, but the sense of what that information overload is could be. Digested by ai, uh, accumulated over time and retrieved when you need it. Like, I don't, I actually don't even need to know this EOB right now, unless of course, whenever I need to know it, that maybe, you know, like for some benefits I need to figure out what do, what did I do over the past year and how do I apply it? Source:

Mike

15,145 Aufrufe • vor 9 Monaten

Thermodynamic computing is here There is a new computing paradigm emerging from the noise, and its arrival may be as significant as the dawn of deep learning or the advent of cloud virtualization. A new company, Extropic, has just launched its first thermodynamic computer, a device they call a TSU, or Thermal Sampling Unit. While the web is already filling with deep technical dives, what’s more important for most of us is building a clear intuition for what this technology is, how it’s fundamentally different from anything that’s come before, and why it’s generating so much excitement. This isn’t just another chip; it’s a new way to think about computation itself. Seeing is Believing: Solving Puzzles in One Shot To understand what a TSU does, let’s look at two classic, notoriously difficult computer science problems: Sudoku and the Eight Queens problem. When you or I solve a Sudoku, we use a process of sequential logic, guess-and-check, and backtracking. We make an assumption, follow its logical conclusion, and if we hit a dead end, we erase and try again. A classical computer does the same, just much faster. A TSU, however, approaches this in a completely different way. Using a TSU simulator, one can “program” the problem by first clamping the known values—the clues already on the board. Then, you program in the constraints: no duplicate numbers in any row, column, or 3x3 square. With the problem thus defined, the TSU doesn’t “search” for a solution; it anneals one. In a single computational step, the solution simply emerges, backfilling all the empty squares correctly. The same principle applies to the Eight Queens problem, a challenge to place eight queens on a chessboard so that none can attack any other. This is a complex combinatorial problem with 92 distinct solutions. A classical computer would have to iteratively search for these. A TSU, by contrast, can be programmed with the constraints (the “anti-affinity” between queens on the same row, column, or diagonal) and then set to sample the “solution space.” In this context, a valid solution is one with a “problem energy” of zero. The TSU’s physical nature allows it to naturally find these zero-energy states. A simulation of this process shows the TSU discovering all 92 unique solutions, demonstrating its ability to not just find an answer, but to explore the entire landscape of all correct answers. This is a fundamentally new approach, one that bypasses the brute-force, iterative methods we’ve relied on for decades. The Physics of Computation: Using Noise, Not Fighting It This new power comes from a radical design philosophy. For the last 70 years, computing has been about one thing: order. We build chips that are deterministic, logical, and precise. The great enemy has always been noise, heat, and randomness. We spend billions on cooling and error correction to eliminate these very things. Quantum computing, in many ways, is the ultimate expression of this, requiring temperatures near absolute zero to eliminate all thermal noise and achieve quantum coherence. Thermodynamic computing is the polar opposite. It doesn’t fight the noise; it uses it. The TSU is built on the understanding that the natural, stochastic noise from “leaky” transistors—the very randomness we’ve tried to engineer out of existence—is itself a powerful computational resource. Think of it this way: a GPU, which is central to today’s AI, has to simulate noise. When a generative AI model creates a new image or sentence, it’s using complex algorithms to fake randomness. The TSU doesn’t need to fake it; it harnesses the actual physical randomness of thermodynamics. It is a piece of hardware that directly computes with probability. This makes it a hybrid, sitting somewhere between a purely analog computer (which might use light or sound waves to compute) and a digital GPU. It’s a physical device that leverages the laws of physics itself to find solutions, rather than just using logic gates to simulate them. From a Lost Hiker to a Million Bouncy Balls Perhaps the best way to build intuition is with a metaphor. Imagine that solving a complex optimization problem is like trying to find the lowest point of altitude in a 100-square-mile mountainous landscape. Classical computing, using an algorithm like gradient descent, is like being a single hiker dropped into this landscape at night. You have no map or satellite view. All you have is an altimeter and the sensation of the slope under your feet. You can only take one step at a time, always walking downhill, hoping you don’t get stuck in a small local valley when the true, lowest canyon is miles away. Thermodynamic computing is a completely different approach. It’s like having a million bouncy balls and a helicopter. You drop all million balls simultaneously across the entire 100-square-mile landscape. Then, you “turn on an earthquake,” shaking the entire system. The balls bounce and jostle, but as the shaking (the “annealing”) subsides, where do they all end up? They naturally settle into the lowest points. The balls that collect in the deepest valley represent the optimal solution. The TSU is, in essence, a physical device for dropping those million balls at once and letting the laws of thermodynamics find the lowest “energy” state for you, all at the same time. Beyond Puzzles: The Real-World Impact This is far more than just a clever way to solve brain teasers. This ability to instantly find the lowest energy state for a complex, constrained system has staggering real-world applications. One of the most immediate is protein folding. Companies like Google’s DeepMind have made incredible progress with AI like AlphaFold, which predicts protein structures. But this is still a predictive model trained on existing data. A TSU could potentially solve the folding problem directly, treating the protein as a system of atomic affinities and repulsions and finding its most stable, lowest-energy configuration almost instantaneously. This could revolutionize drug discovery and materials science. An even more profound possibility lies in nuclear fusion. One of the greatest engineering challenges in history is controlling the superheated plasma within a tokamak reactor. This requires shaping unimaginably complex magnetic containment fields in real-time to prevent the plasma from touching the reactor walls. This is a real-time optimization problem so complex it’s currently beyond our capabilities. A TSU, however, could be fast enough. Its ability to compute with electricity itself, rather than abstracting the problem through layers of software, might allow it to update the magnetic fields fast enough to stabilize the fusion reaction. One could even imagine a future where thermodynamic computing elements are built directly into the tokamak’s walls, allowing the reactor to physically and intelligently react to the plasma’s state in real time. A ‘GPT-2 Moment’ for a New Era It’s easy to become numb to hype, but what we are witnessing with the TSU feels different. This is what you might call a “GPT-2 moment.” For those who were there, GPT-2 was the first generative AI model that wasn’t just a toy; it was the first time you could play with it at home and see the spark of true generative intelligence. It was the precursor that pointed directly to the GPT-3 and ChatGPT revolution that has since changed the world. This TSU has that same feel. It’s the “SDK” for a new computing paradigm. This technology is as different from classical computing as quantum computing is, but with a critical difference: a team of 15 built this in two years, and it runs at room temperature on your desk. Quantum computing has seen decades of work and billions in funding, and it still hasn’t produced a commercially viable, scalable machine. The TSU is here now. Based on a two-decade-long career at the cutting edge of technology—from seeing the obvious future of virtualization in 2007 to an early conviction in deep learning and GPT—this has all the same hallmarks of a fundamental, world-changing shift. We are not just building faster calculators; we are learning to compute with the universe itself. Pay close attention to this. This is the next big thing.

David Shapiro (L/0)

83,649 Aufrufe • vor 10 Monaten