Arm AGI CPU

(newsroom.arm.com)

162 points | by RealityVoid 3 hours ago ago

95 comments

  • tombert 25 minutes ago

    The name of this CPU is bordering on securities fraud. When people see the term "AGI" now, they are assuming "Artificial General Intelligence", not "Agentic AI Infrastructure".

    Of course people don't realize that, and people will buy ARM stock thinking they've cracked AGI. The people running Arm absolutely know this, so this name is what we in the industry call a "lie".

    • torginus 12 minutes ago

      Considering AGI has been degraded into a generic feelgood marketing word, I can't wait to get my AGI-scented deodorant.

    • bhouston 7 minutes ago

      If you showed someone what our computers can do with the latest LLMs now to someone 5 years ago they would probably say it sure looks a lot like AGI.

      We have to keep defining AGI upwards or nitpick it to show that we haven't achieved it.

      I would argue that LLMs are actually smarter than the majority of humans right now. LLMs do not have quite the agency that humans have, but their intelligence is pretty decent.

      We don't have clear ASI yet, but we definitely are in a AGI-era.

      I think we are missing an ego/motiviations in the AGI and them having self-sufficiency independent of us, but that is just a bit of engineering that would actually make them more dangerous, it isn't really a significant scientific hurdle.

      • tombert 5 minutes ago

        Ok, but it's not AGI. People five years ago would have been wrong. People who don't have all the information are often wrong about things.

      • hermanzegerman 4 minutes ago

        No they aren't

        ChatGPT Health failed hilariously bad at just spotting emergencies.

        A few weeks ago most of them failed hilariously bad at the question if you should drive or walk to the service station if you want to wash your car

        • bhouston 2 minutes ago

          I would accuse you of nitpicking. My experience is that LLMs are generally as smart as the average human +90% of the time. A lack of perfect to me doesn't mean it isn't AGI.

      • flowardnut 5 minutes ago

        "look, it completely lied about params that don't exist in a CLI!"

        • bhouston 4 minutes ago

          AGI doesn't mean perfect. It means human like and the latest models are pretty human like in terms of their fallibility and capabilities.

    • 0x3f 2 minutes ago

      > Of course people don't realize that, and people will buy ARM stock thinking they've cracked AGI.

      Doesn't seem like a very credible assertion. Picking stocks in this way would remove you from the market pretty quickly.

    • kergonath 3 minutes ago

      AGI is a poorly-defined concept anyway. It’s just vibes, nothing descriptive.

    • Ucalegon 9 minutes ago

      Marketing is marketing, nothing about it was ever about being factual when there is a total addressable market to go after and dollars to be made! This is inline with much of the other marketing that exists in the AI space as it stands now, not mention the use of AGI within the space as it stands currently.

      • tombert 3 minutes ago

        Sure, but there are plenty of cases where a deceptive name has been considered enough to at least warrant an investigation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Blockchain_Corp.

        I'm not saying anything is going to happen, ARM holdings has a lot more money and lawyers than Long Blockchain did, but I'm just saying that it's not weird to think that a deceptive name could be considered false advertising.

    • LeifCarrotson 5 minutes ago

      Those in the industry don't call it a lie, they call it "marketing".

      It's those out of the industry who call them lies.

    • monegator 14 minutes ago

      In case you haven't noticed, this whole thing has been a grift since 2022. It's kind of amazing that nobody thought of making AGI processors before

    • alfalfasprout 20 minutes ago

      the whole AI space is rife with much worse example of what could be considered securities fraud tbh

  • aurareturn an hour ago

    This is just a Neoverse CPU that Arm will manufacture themselves at TSMC and then sell directly to customers.

    It isn't an "AI" CPU. There is nothing AI about it. There is nothing about it that makes it more AI than Graviton, Epyc, Xeon, etc.

    This was already revealed in the Qualcomm vs Arm lawsuit a few years ago. Qualcomm accused Arm of planning to sell their CPUs directly instead of just licensing. Arm's CEO at the time denied it. Qualcomm ends up being right.

    I wrote a post here on why Arm is doing this and why now: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47032932

    • benob 24 minutes ago

      This reminds me of Intel talking about faster web browsing with the new Pentium

  • steve1977 an hour ago

    I think the interesting bit is actually this:

    For the first time in our more than 35-year history, Arm is delivering its own silicon products

    • lenerdenator 9 minutes ago

      What would be the real advantage of doing that?

  • rafram an hour ago

    AGI (Agentic AI Infrastructure) is joining CSS (Compute Subsystems) in their lineup, apparently. Who’s naming this stuff?

    • LikesPwsh an hour ago

      The same people who abbreviate "generative" AI in a way that misleadingly conflates it with "general" AI.

      Fraud is just the default lifestyle of marketers.

    • LollipopYakuza an hour ago

      So Artificial General Intelligence and Cascading Style Sheets are not joining forces?

      • lenerdenator 8 minutes ago

        If there's ever a singularity as a result of AGI, it will likely look at CSS and decide that extermination is simply too good for the human race.

      • rafram 40 minutes ago

        Always have been :)

  • throwa356262 2 hours ago

    AGI = Agentic AI Infrastructure

    In case you were thinking about some other abbreviation...

    • conductr an hour ago

      Missed opportunity to call it AAII and market it as twice as powerful as regular AI.

      • jayd16 5 minutes ago

        We put AI in our AI so the AI is already baked in.

      • flopsamjetsam 27 minutes ago

        A^2I^2 or (AI)^2

    • ux266478 2 hours ago

      I think this is a poetic encapsulation of the AI industry at this point. A beautifully poignant vignette.

    • ww520 20 minutes ago

      Should have called it A^3I^2 - Arm Agentic Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure.

    • bee_rider an hour ago

      It’s like they decided to moon all the onlookers while jumping the shark…

      I don’t know if it was intentional or they were so far out over their skis that they got their bathing suit caught, but it’s impressive either way.

    • RealityVoid 2 hours ago

      It's... really something. Not good. Something.

    • monegator an hour ago

      what lenghts are they going to, just to say we have achieved AGI... now who's moving the goalpost?

    • esafak an hour ago

      The coast is clear to come up with your own expansion for AI!

    • hootz 2 hours ago

      What a terrible, terrible name.

    • lupajz 2 hours ago

      I mean, they could at least use AI to figure out how to name their AI product.

      • embedding-shape an hour ago

        > I work at ARM, we're launching a new CPU optimized for LLM usage. We're thinking of calling it "Arm Agentic AI Infrastructure CPU", or "Arm AGI CPU" for short. Do you think this is a good idea?

        > No. I would not use it as the product name. “AGI CPU” will be read as artificial general intelligence, not “agentic AI infrastructure,” so it invites confusion and sounds hypey.

        To bad these executives seemingly don't have access to ChatGPT.

      • _ache_ an hour ago

        They did ask AI if AGI what a great name. It said that it was the greatest name possible. It's bold, aspirational, and ... polarizing?!

        Oh god! Mistral tell me it's highly polarizing, will make the buzz and it's risky but anyway people will know that ARM is doing CPU again now (maybe I did put too many context).

      • foolproofplan an hour ago

        maybe they did and why they got this slop?

    • charcircuit an hour ago

      AGI stands for Artificial General Intelligence.

      • lock1 an hour ago

        Pretty sure it stands for "Artificial abbreviation & hype GeneratIon" nowadays

      • hagbard_c an hour ago

        Are you sure it doesn't stand for Advanced Guessing Instrument? That's what the result often seem to indicate after all.

    • artyom an hour ago

      Not bait at all

    • SilverElfin an hour ago

      They pathetically don’t mention what it stands for anywhere in this press release. Deceptive marketing at worst, shameless AI-washing at best.

    • WhrRTheBaboons an hour ago

      I would've went for Agentic Neural Infrastructure personally

      ARMANI for short /s

  • mkl 2 hours ago

    This is like naming your kid World President Smith.

    • rboyd an hour ago

      This could work. Right? https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2002-12744-001

      My realtor's last name is House

      • conductr an hour ago

        > Studies 1-5 showed that people are disproportionately likely to live in places whose names resemble their own first or last names (e.g., people named Louis are disproportionately likely to live in St. Louis).

        When I lived in Austin, it seemed like a third of boys born were being named Austin. I presume many of them will end up living there as adults but not because of this particular bias, because they were raised there and have family’s there seems to be a more likely driver.

        • chrisweekly an hour ago

          "Nominative determinism" is everywhere once you look for it. My vet's last name is McStay.

          • krrrh 9 minutes ago

            I just listened to an interview with Carl Trueman about his new book which criticizes transhumanism.

      • technothrasher 42 minutes ago

        > Studies 1-5 showed that people are disproportionately likely to live in places whose names resemble their own first or last names

        There are several cities in the US that share my last name. I don't live near any of them.

        > Study 6 extended this finding to birthday number preferences.

        D'oh!

      • tombert 24 minutes ago

        My urologist, and I swear I'm not making this up, has the last name "Wiener".

      • IshKebab an hour ago

        Reporting bias.

  • ahmedfromtunis 25 minutes ago

    Poor TSMC (and ASML)! They were already struggling with capacity to fulfill orders from their established customers. With ARM now joining the them, I don't know they're going to cope.

    Edit: They new CPU will be build with the soon-to-be-former leading edge process of 3nm lithography.

  • bt1a 34 minutes ago

    Oh wow already in use by Meta, OpenAI, and more ?? https://www.arm.com/products/cloud-datacenter/arm-agi-cpu/ec...

    The TDP to memory bandwidth& capacity ratio form these blades is in a class of its own, yes?

  • yabutlivnWoods 2 hours ago

    How fun would it be if due to improved chips handling more model state RAM needs are reduced and Sama cannot make all those RAM purchases he booked?

    VC without a degree who has no grasp of hardware engineering failed up when all he had to do was noodle numbers in an Excel sheet.

    He is so far behind the hardware scene he thinks its sitting still and RAM requirements will be a nice linear path to AGI. Not if new chips optimized for model streaming crater RAM needs.

    Hilarious how last decades software geniuses are being revealed as incompetent finance engineers whose success was all due to ZIRP offering endless runway.

    • gtowey 2 hours ago

      The thing they are good at is bullshitting and selling hype. Which we see here doesn't mean they are actually going to be good at running a business. Smart leaders understand they are not omnipotent and omniscient so they surround themselves who know how to get things done. Weak, narcissist leaders think they're the smartest one in the room and fail.

      Unfortunately failing upwards is still somehow common, probably because the skill of parting fools from their money is still valuable.

      • thereitgoes456 an hour ago

        No, he is also good at networking. When OpenAI was mission-driven and Sam was more respected, he could convince the most talented people to work for him.

        Now the talent is going to other places for a variety of reasons, not all due to Sam (one of which is little room for options to grow). However it’s hard to believe his tanking reputation is not badly hurting the company. Other than Jakub and Greg, I believe there are not many top tier people left, those in top positions are there because they are yes-men to Sam.

    • mhjkl 2 hours ago

      What RAM? OpenAI booked the silicon wafers, they can print anything they want on them. I wouldn't call them "far behind" on hardware when OpenAI are actively buying Cerebras chips.

      • yabutlivnWoods 13 minutes ago

        Yes exactly; he is behind in that he has to buy others chips with little say on how they work.

        Apple and Google control their own designs.

        Sama is 100% an outsider, merely a customer. The chip insiders are onto his effort to pivot out of meme-stock hyping, into owning a chunk of their fiefdom. They laughed off his claims a couple years ago as insane VC gibberish (third hand paraphrase from social network in chip and hardware land).

        No way he can pivot and print whatever. Relative to hardware industry he is one of those programmers who can say just enough to get an interview but whiffs the code challenge.

        He has no idea where the bleeding edge is so he will just release dated designs. Chip IP is a moat.

        Plus a bunch of RAM companies would be left hanging; no orders, no wafers. Sama risks being Jimmy Hoffa'd imploding the asset values of other billionaires.

  • vsgherzi 12 minutes ago

    is this a cpu that's meant for AI training or is it more for serving inference? I don't quite get why I would want to buy an arm CPU over a nvidia GPU for ai applications.

  • RealityVoid 3 hours ago

    Arm apparently now sells their own CPU's.

  • papichulo2023 2 hours ago

    What does "Built for rack-scale agentic efficiency" even means?

    • throwa356262 an hour ago

      If you read past the marketing talk, this is basically a massively multicore system (136) with significantly reduced power usage (300W).

      Where does Agentic come into this? ARMs explanation is that future Agentic workloads will be both CPU and GPU bound thus the need for significant CPU efficiency.

    • inerte 2 hours ago

      It's volume of tokens consumed x number of agents x rack space. Basically agentic computation density.

    • ray_v 2 hours ago

      We just say words now that sound good for marketing but have no real meaning.

    • thewebguyd an hour ago

      Big "but mongodb is web scale" vibes

    • varispeed 2 hours ago

      It's a code sentence for let's go to the utility room to cross pollinate ideas.

    • r_lee 2 hours ago

      I was gonna say just big DCs in marketing yap but really wtf does that mean?

    • otabdeveloper4 2 hours ago

      It's when LLM agents are inefficient that you need a whole rack of servers to get shit done.

    • sdwvit 2 hours ago

      Translation: “Can you give us some money pretty please?”

  • bobmcnamara 31 minutes ago

    6GB/s/core

    That's...not much right? Maybe it's a lot times N-cores? But I really hope each individual core isn't limited to that.

    Edit: 17 minutes to sum RAM?

    • jeffbee 8 minutes ago

      It isn't obvious to me that they intended to give this as the maximum single-core performance, or just the proportional share of 844GB/s across 136 cores. Implementations of Neoverse V2 by Nvidia and Amazon hit 20-30GB/s in single-threaded work.

  • midnightdiesel an hour ago

    What a product name choice! I wasn’t expecting ARM to pivot to selling snake oil.

  • josemanuel an hour ago

    Interesting that Jensen Huang joined in the congratulations for this new product!

  • twostorytower an hour ago

    And the stock is down >2% today

  • myhf 26 minutes ago

    finally, a CPU capable of making API calls to cloud providers

  • torusle 43 minutes ago

    ARM riding the "everything is AI" train.

    So sad.

  • SilverElfin an hour ago

    Call this an “AGI CPU” just feels like the most out of touch, terrible marketing possible. Maybe this is unfair but it makes me think ARM as a whole is incompetent just because it is so tasteless.

    > Arm has additionally partnered with Supermicro on a liquid-cooled 200kW design capable of housing 336 Arm AGI CPUs for over 45,000 cores.

    Also just bad timing on trying to brag about a partnership with Supermicro, after a founder was just indicted on charges of smuggling Nvidia GPUs. Just bizarre to mention them at all.

  • rvz 2 hours ago

    Meta are heavily invested in building their own chips with ARM to reduce their reliance on Nvidia as everyone is going after their (Nvidia) data center revenues.

    This is why Meta acquired a chip startup for this reason [0] months ago.

    [0] https://www.reuters.com/business/meta-buy-chip-startup-rivos...

  • jeffbee an hour ago

    Many of these words are unexplained. "Memory and I/O on the same die". Oh? What does this mean? All of the DRAM in the photo/render is still on sticks. Do they mean the memory controller? Or is there an embedded DRAM component?

    • ahoka an hour ago

      All processors have memory on the same die.

      • jeffbee 32 minutes ago

        How much, what kind, and what is your source?

        All mainstream server CPUs have a megabyte or two of SRAM on a core, of course.

  • nurettin 2 hours ago

    I was wondering who convinced ARM to manufacture hardware. Turns out it was Meta.

    • cmrdporcupine an hour ago

      Now if only they would go back to being "Acorn RISC Machines" and make a nice desktop home computer again...

      One can dream.

      • wmf 37 minutes ago

        DGX Spark is pretty nice. It could be cheaper if they removed the NIC though.

    • walterbell an hour ago

      Nuvia/Qualcomm lawsuit and Softbank.

    • redwood 2 hours ago

      Fabless. Like AMD and Nvidia. So I would think about it more as branding and packaging than Manufacturing

      • anvuong an hour ago

        Huh, many companies use TSMC, in fact, probably all of them use TSMC, including Intel, yet there are only a few who dominates in performance. There are much more in designing chips than what you just listed.

      • IshKebab an hour ago

        There's a big difference between just providing IP and actually doing the physical design, manufacturing and packaging. You can't just send your RTL to TSMC and magically get packaged chips back.

        I haven't ever ordered an ARM SoC but I also wouldn't be surprised if there were significant parts that they left up to integrators before - PLLs, pads, SRAM etc.

  • DeathArrow 38 minutes ago

    Now every product will have the AI buzzword in it's name, just like 25 years ago product names started with letter e, from electronic.

    So we will see AI Toilet Paper launching in the next months.

  • vova_hn2 2 hours ago

    I found this article extremely frustrating to read. Maybe I lack some required prior knowledge and I am not the target audience for this.

    > built on the Arm Neoverse platform

    What the heck is "Arm Neoverse"? No explanation given, link leads to website in Chinese. Using Firefox translating tool doesn't help much:

    > Arm Neoverse delivers the best performance from the cloud to the edge

    What? This is just a pile of buzzwords, it doesn't mean anything.

    The article doesn't seem to contain any information on how much it costs or any performance benchmarks to compare it with other CPUs. It's all just marketing slop, basically.

    • nicoburns 2 hours ago

      > The ARM Neoverse is a group of 64-bit ARM processor cores licensed by Arm Holdings. The cores are intended for datacenter, edge computing, and high-performance computing use. The group consists of ARM Neoverse V-Series, ARM Neoverse N-Series, and ARM Neoverse E-Series.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_Neoverse

    • snek_case an hour ago

      I feel like this is most products in the AI space lately. More marketing fuzz than substance. Hard to figure out what thing even does.