Hacker News Reader

Comment by drewg123 | Hacker News Reader

I'm confused. Is there any relationship between the recent Ampere Arm64 servers (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22475036) and Nvidia's "Ampere Architecture", or is it just a case of them using the same name?

View on HN

I don't like that people downvoted you for asking a question.

If someone thinks the question is stupid or not doesn't mean that a downvote is warranted. (nor an upvote, answer the question and move on.)

To answer though; it's just a coincidence, as you might already know Nvidia uses famous scientists (especially in the field of electricity) as the names of their microarchitectures.

* Volta (Alessandro Volta, inventor of the electric battery)

* Tesla (inventor/designer of A/C current)

* Maxwell (James Clerk Maxwell, founder of electromagnetic radiation)

* Pascal (Blaise Pascal, lots of science around "pressure", arguably his work led to the creation of vacuum tubes used in early computers)

Ampere (from André-Marie Ampère, who lent his name to his discovery and classification of "amps") is just an electrical scientists name.

Coincidentally a new company founded in 2017 decided that it was a good name for them, and thus the confusion.

Tesla is famous in the US for inventing polyphase AC and induction motors, but this is really one of these stories were a bunch of people invented the same thing very closely to each other due to a precipitating reaching of understanding.

Note that Tesla's designs were IIRC two-phase which is largely inferior to three-phase. The push for three-phase and associated designs and inventions (three phase transformers on a single core etc.) came from outside the US.

> but this is really one of these stories were a bunch of people invented the same thing very closely to each other due to a precipitating reaching of understanding.

This is by far the dominant case of invention. Truly independent work is incredibly rare.

And yet we grant patents so liberally, giving a windfall to the first person who files.

Remember the long view - patents cause people to hurry to publish and share their ideas publically. Why shouldn't they be granted liberally.

In a few years, the temporary monopoly falls away and the benefit passes to everyone.

I think they should work to make them even cheaper and easier to file.

20 years is a long time. For some fields, it is perfectly reasonable, but 20 year patents on many recent CS inventions would have significantly bottlenecked development of the industry - Look at how much mess was created by the JPEG patents, for example, and similar problems have existed for every other not-explicitly-libre A/V codec.

While we're on the subject of patents and Nvidia, their patent on using quasi Monte Carlo in rendering is allowing them to hold basically the whole path tracing world hostage, e.g. possibly forcing people to use CUDA who might otherwise have used OpenCL.

They didn't even invent the numerical methods themselves (pure mathematics from other countries from long ago), they were just first to file for a particular application.

I believe a few years is 20 years though. I haven't thought of patents from this perspective but 20 years is still a long time (and large chunk of your working years) to benefit from something.

There's a strong adverse selection effect, though. Because you need to publish to be granted a patent but can sue whenever anyone infringes (whether willful or not), the incentive is to patent obvious approaches that don't work well and hold the best approach that you're actually using as a trade secret. That way, anyone attempting to replicate you likely ends up in a patent minefield, yet you don't give away the keys to the castle in a patent where you have to detect infringement yourself.

Indeed. I found it quite enlightening to go through this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_multiple_discoveries

The thing that's a little different about Tesla in the US at least, is he is so incredibly fetishized by eg high-profile idiots: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla, or conspiracy nutjobs like the International Tesla Institute (http://teslatech.info/ttevents/prgframe.htm http://tesla.org/tesla_fair_abq.htm) publishing and promoting Tesla related conspiracies and hawking investments in snake-oil technology like Rand Cam engines, VMSK, and all manner of "over-unity" machines

I've always enjoyed the oatmeal's comics. What is your reason for referring to him as an idiot?

Actually at first I thought idiot was a bit harsh.. but then I reread what I had forgotten about that post - I think if he's juvenile to promote the vandalism of wikipedia over a completely fantastical, out of context reinterpretation of history to label Thomas Edison a "douchebag", well then it is fair to label him an idiot on a limited forum.

Also, there's no accounting for taste but I find even his non-serious comics puerile and not terribly funny - pretty much one step above Taboola chum, or Jim Davis for millenials. Most of the "humor" and overplayed hook is simply describing everyday things with odd adjectives, ie hair cave=vagina, saliva=evil mouth juice, wow. There's probably a term for this trope.. Anyway, it gets clicks on Facebook.

Ironically, that's what they put on the PCB. Those yellow things on both side of the chip package are actual micro transformers made of some material with very tricky magnetic properties.

I wonder, was the name Ampere a reference to its titanic current consumption?

Those only reason to put those on the PCB would be to provide current above 1kA

You're looking at an SXM module, so that PCB is the whole thing. TDP is 400 W. I assume these run at a sub-1 V core voltage due to their relatively low clocks, so yeah, you are looking at a core supply current that may well exceed 500 A at full load and has to be provided by those VRMs crammed on that board.

Worth pointing out that that's not really new. Gaming cards have been running at about a Volt for a bunch of years now and all of those chuck 250+ W, so the currents are rather substantial.

If rebuilding a grid today, would going to DC power be advantageous to AC?

What has changed between then and now? High voltage DC also works well for long distance transmission but is only preferable to AC at even higher voltages.

HVDC works for linking grids and for very long distance transmission between few stations. It does not work well at all for distribution. Never did. Never will. Sorrynotsorry.

I'm sure Nvidia is paying a nice licensing fee to Ampere for the registered trademark. Otherwise it'd be sheer stupidity.

I don’t know if you’re being sarcastic, but trademarking a famous scientist’s name seems legally dubious at best. Is that allowed? I.e. Tesla the car company and nvidia Tesla’s GPUs; is there a gentleman’s agreement between these two or is such a name simply not trademarkable?

My understanding (IANAL) is that "Tesla" is trademarked by the company. [1] Note that doesn't mean no one else can ever use that name for anything. It does mean I'd probably get a cease and desist letter if I tried to go into the car business under the name Tesla. But I can probably get a trademark in other areas where there isn't a serious possibility of confusion. How close I'm willing to get to that line probably depends on how badly I want the name and how conservative the lawyers are.

[1] https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=e4eaa83d-47dc...

In general a trademark is registered for a specific class (~industry). As long as the trademarks are for different classes and there is no risk of confusion, multiple companies/products can have the same name. For example Delta is the name of an airline, a computer company, a faucet company and a family of orbital rockets. There's little risk anybody would confuse these four, and they don't belong to the same class, so they can coexist just fine.

The US is quite generous in what you can trademark. In the EU for example you can't (as easily) trademark common words. But a quick search shows about 50 active EU trademarks on the word Tesla.

trademarking a famous scientist’s name seems legally dubious at best

It's pretty common - the Apple Newton(TM) and Salesforce Einstein(TM) spring to mind.

Not sure why this is being downvoted because it's a good point.

Ampere, Ampere Semiconductor and Ampere Computing are all registered trademarks of the computing company in the class NVidia would need, and they'd have a good case this this is causing confusion (they'd probably cite this thread).

It'll be interesting to see what happens.

Thank you for calling out the downvote issue. I've refrained from asking questions for this exact reason.

People should be encouraged to ask questions, even if from a position of lesser knowledge of the matter at hand. Those that do answer are probably not only helping the person asking the question, but those who may not ask the question even if it is one in their mind.

How many others refrain from enriching the dialogue for the same reasons?

Commenting about voting is discouraged in the HN guidelines.

Also, questions that could be answered with a quick internet search don't make good discussion.

Thanks for reminding me as I had forgotten. Still it seems a bit weird not to be able to discuss. Again, thanks for the reminder (I suspect others who read this thread may also be reminded).

You are correct in saying some questions are better than others. But again that's no reason to downvote as it actively discourages people from participation. I would think the best course would be to ignore and move on as the original comment on this thread mentioned. Downvoting can be a hostile action. Ignoring is neutral.

As per the guidelines themselves: >Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.

Case in point, my comment was downvoted, even though the subsequent comment was an illuminating reminder for myself and possibly others. Those downvotes seem somewhat arbitrary at best, hostile at worst.

I've no more to say so I will refrain from any further comments on voting dynamic.

Pascal also invented a few mechanical calculators[0] which might considered in a way precursor to modern computers.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_calculator

Also, that's not a dumb question! That's a very specific name, and two products coming out in a window of time both using the same name is enough to cause some confusion. I found the question and answer to be very useful.

I was actually surprised that NVIDIA went through with it, it seems like a straightforward trademark case. Two types of computer processor that share a marketing name.

Obviously if you are "in the know" they are not really the same type of processor but it is closer than you usually see companies get with their trademarks

If someone thinks the question is stupid or not doesn't mean that a downvote is warranted. (nor an upvote, answer the question and move on.)

The type of questions being downvoted sometimes makes me question sanity. In general I believe that downvoting is probably one of the most poisonous thing invented in newsgroups.

downvoting is toxic yea, but look at twitter for what happens when its not a thing, its just as bad if not worse in this direction, comments have no almost no coherency and trolls are incredibly rampant. on sites with downvoting like reddit the problem is somewhat less, but the hivemind effect takes root. theres really not many good solutions right now.

How about moderators and the ability to ban? I understand it might not be economically sound.

Pedantic, but electromagnetic radiation's "founding" precedes Mr. Maxwell. :)

One possible reason to downvote is that the question was the top comment for this post, but it does not directly discuss the new technology introduced in the post. I don't know how HN ranking works, but I'd assume that the top comment to a front-page topping article has already collected a sizable share of upvotes.

I came to the comments with the exact same question

And even before that there was:

* GeForce (for Andrea Geforce, the first to use the color electric green)

* Riva (for Jose Riva, the discoverer that you can use TNT to generate electricity.)

well done

Wow Riva, that brand name brings back memories. Almost as magical as 3dfx and Voodoo. (which NVIDIA ultimately acquired). Truly game changing hardware.

Thanks Scott, Gary and Ross (founders of 3Dfx) you cards gave me and my friends thousands of hours of enjoyment.

I bought a Voodoo as my first 3D card and was so disappointed that it did not support my motherboard (PCI 2.1, I had PCI 2.0), so I had to return to the shop and exchanged it for a TNT. :(

Who is Andrea Geforce? I can't find any information about him/her.

Because he was not a famous scientist, like Alexander Ball, inventor of round inflatable objects.

you just need to create its wikipedia entry and it will exist soon.

Wikipedia tells the following about the Geforce name:

> The "GeForce" name originated from a contest held by Nvidia in early 1999 called "Name That Chip". The company called out to the public to name the successor to the RIVA TNT2 line of graphics boards. There were over 12,000 entries received and 7 winners received a RIVA TNT2 Ultra graphics card as a reward.[2][3]

- https://web.archive.org/web/20000608011648/http://www.nvidia...

- https://tweakers.net/nieuws/1967/nVidia-Name-that-chip-conte...

So not sure the origin is actually from Andrea Geforce, I can certainly not find any sources that confirm that.

Wow, I didn't know that. Wasn't it done in contest by Gamers?

So what does "Radeon" mean?

Edit: Yes according to Wiki. So we may never know whether Before was actually dedicated to the person. I remember vaguely reading PC Gamer at the time that was not the case at all.

Radeon comes from ATI (later acquired by AMD) so probably doesn't follow the same naming scheme as Nvidia does.

Not just electricity, but basic physics. Don't forget the Kepler architecture, named after the astronomer Johannes Kepler, and the Fermi architecture, named after the nuclear physicist Enrico Fermi (although the same physics is important in semiconductors). Although there;s also an odd exception, which is the Turing architecture.

Tesla was also the name of a Czechoslovak elektronics company, known among other thing for their electron microscopes. Even though this Tesla is long gone, it has a lasting legacy here in Brno due to many electron microscope manufacturers (Delong, FEI, Thermo Fisher, etc.) being present and often libking their origin or many employees to the old Tesla company.

And a museum in Belgrad.

Ha, my cousin works in one of those electron microscope companies. Thought it was some one-off company saving some costs maybe due to good graduates coming out of Brno technical university, good to know there is more to it!

One of the old Tesla company buildings is now the Brno Museum of Technology and the have (among many other) an exposition about the history of electron microcopy in Brno. One of the mashines that is part of the exposition (a huge experimental electron beam litography machine) is pretty much bolted in place in the same spot the old Tesla company built it all those years ago. There are even some "legends" about how they built it so well, that it is still holding vacuum inside today.

Another legend says that they once could not get a new model of electron microscope working before showing it on an international exposition. The image was always blurry. They ran out of time, so they just took it to the exposition to fix it there. But it worked flawlessly there! Turns out this was due to the tram troley lines running next to the company building interferring with the electron optics. :)

Same name, but Ampere the company probably came first (2017).

They're both named after the famous mathematician and physicist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9-Marie_Amp%C3%A8re

Ampere has been on NVidia's roadmap for the better part of a decade.

> Ampere has been on NVidia's roadmap for the better part of a decade.

Not publicly, at least, since rumors of the "Ampere" naming surfaced around late 2017. https://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/matthew-wil...

Ah, I thought I remembered seeing the name on their roadmap earlier than that, but I must have been mistaken. In any case I think it's safe to say the name wasn't ripped off anyone give the names of pervious products and the timing of those rumors.

ARM server chip is from a company named Ampere that has nothing to do with Nvidia

Reply on news.ycombinator.com