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Stop trying to make Etched happen. - zach's tech blog

zach.be · 1,641 words · saved by 1 readers

This isn’t the first time I’ve written about Etched, the chip startup claiming to “burn transformers into silicon.” Back then, Etched had only raised about $5M in a small seed round, so I wasn’t too harsh -- I mostly used their pitch as a jumping off point to explain why trying to beat Nvidia through specialization is a bad idea. Nvidia is already building highly specialized tensor cores to accelerate matrix multiplication, and they have armies of incredibly talented engineers working hard to optimize every little bit of their silicon. I recently met an engineer with a PhD whose entire job is to reduce the glitching power consumption in Nvidia’s logic circuits. Nvidia has so many engineering resources that it makes competing directly against them incredibly difficult. I wouldn’t put my money behind any company trying to compete with them head-on. Apparently a lot of venture capitalists disagree with that assessment, though. Etched just raised a $120M to bring their first chips to marke

Stop trying to make Etched happen. If you raise $120M, at least try to write an honest press release. zach Jun 28, 2024 9 Share This isn’t the first time I’ve written about Etched, the chip startup claiming to “ burn transformers into silicon .” Back then, Etched had only raised about $5M in a small seed round , so I wasn’t too harsh -- I mostly used their pitch as a jumping off point to explain why trying to beat Nvidia through specialization is a bad idea. Nvidia is already building highly specialized tensor cores to accelerate matrix multiplication, and they have armies of incredibly talent

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