I hate the phrase “X$ in compute” so much. What does that even mean? It could mean a 1.5 million dollar value worth of donated time on one of their servers, or it could mean a hardware donation, or it could be a cash donation that is earmarked for server upgrades/chip purchases. Ever since AI took off it’s become such a common turn of phrase to use “compute” like this. As if the amount of money spent tells you anything useful about the amount of things they can “compute” now. Costs are so variable and spread out across many different areas that it changes day by day, and by which vendor you use, or what part of the world you are in, or all kinds of other things.
Maybe I’m just behind the times and it has some specific meaning now I’m not aware of. Either way it annoys me.
So what does “1.5mil$ in CPU/GPU time” mean then? It doesn’t make sense. That’s not a standardized unit of time. Are we talking tokens like with AI? Whatever SpaceX’s going rate is to use their servers? Some other commercial service? That’s why I don’t like it being used like this. It would be like me saying I am donating 1.5 million dollars of “food” to the homless. Like that’s great right, but what the fuck do I mean by food? I could be giving them rice and beans, caviar, or anything in between. Meal vouchers to mcdonalds, or working with soup kitchens. It’s just vague.
I hate the phrase “X$ in compute” so much. What does that even mean? It could mean a 1.5 million dollar value worth of donated time on one of their servers, or it could mean a hardware donation, or it could be a cash donation that is earmarked for server upgrades/chip purchases. Ever since AI took off it’s become such a common turn of phrase to use “compute” like this. As if the amount of money spent tells you anything useful about the amount of things they can “compute” now. Costs are so variable and spread out across many different areas that it changes day by day, and by which vendor you use, or what part of the world you are in, or all kinds of other things.
Maybe I’m just behind the times and it has some specific meaning now I’m not aware of. Either way it annoys me.
Compute means CPU/GPU time and has meant it for ages
So what does “1.5mil$ in CPU/GPU time” mean then? It doesn’t make sense. That’s not a standardized unit of time. Are we talking tokens like with AI? Whatever SpaceX’s going rate is to use their servers? Some other commercial service? That’s why I don’t like it being used like this. It would be like me saying I am donating 1.5 million dollars of “food” to the homless. Like that’s great right, but what the fuck do I mean by food? I could be giving them rice and beans, caviar, or anything in between. Meal vouchers to mcdonalds, or working with soup kitchens. It’s just vague.