QuietBox
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Jim Keller的RISC-V工作站实测
半导体行业观察· 2025-11-28 01:22
Core Insights - Tenstorrent is positioning itself as a unique player in the AI infrastructure space, offering RISC-V based accelerators that are already available for use, unlike many competitors still in the development phase [1][3] - The QuietBox, priced at $11,999, serves as a powerful yet cost-effective development platform, showcasing the potential of Tenstorrent's architecture and performance capabilities [1][60] - The company aims to provide a scalable solution with a focus on open-source software, which differentiates it from competitors like Nvidia [37][60] Product Overview - Tenstorrent has launched three generations of RISC-V based accelerators, with the QuietBox being a notable example that allows for easy scaling from single cards to larger systems [1][3] - The QuietBox features a liquid-cooled design, housing four Blackhole P150 accelerators, which collectively offer over 3 petaFLOPS of FP8 performance [11][60] - The system is designed for developers interested in exploring Tenstorrent's hardware and software ecosystem, providing a low-cost entry point [3][60] Technical Specifications - The QuietBox is equipped with an AMD Epyc 8124P CPU, 512 GB of DDR5 memory, and 4 TB of NVMe storage, alongside the four Blackhole P150 accelerators [13][11] - Each P150 chip integrates 752 mini RISC-V cores, providing a total of 140 Tensix processing cores, with a memory bandwidth of 2 TB/s [16][18] - The accelerators utilize a unique interconnect architecture that allows for high-speed communication between chips, achieving a total bandwidth of 3,200 Gbps [21][23] Software and Development - Tenstorrent's software stack is fully open-source, with plans to develop a compiler similar to Nvidia's CUDA, aimed at making it easier for developers to utilize the hardware [37][40] - The company is working on a multi-level intermediate representation compiler called Forge, which will facilitate the conversion of existing models to be compatible with Tenstorrent hardware [40][41] - Despite the promising hardware, the software ecosystem is still maturing, and the lack of optimized kernels for popular AI workloads is a significant challenge [60][61] Performance Insights - Initial benchmarks indicate that the QuietBox's performance may not fully utilize its capabilities due to unoptimized software, leading to lower-than-expected results in LLM inference tasks [55][58] - The architecture allows for linear scalability, but the current software limitations hinder the realization of its full potential [60][61] - Tenstorrent's ongoing development efforts aim to enhance performance and usability, with a focus on improving documentation and user guidance [62][61]