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Discussing the US Gov't switching to AMD, FSR vs DLSS, AI, and Blackwell w/ Defense Engineer (Patreon)

Published:
2024-05-22 20:48:12
Edited:
2024-05-22 21:41:32
Imported:
2026-06
Tags:

Content

The next episode of Broken Silicon will see us be joined by "Matt", an Engineer working in the Defense industry for the US Government! He has technically been on before as the "Gov't Engineer", and now he has gotten the OK to speak more openly about what he does and what he is seeing regarding purchasing decisions at the department of defense.

The US Government switching to AMD from Intel

Intel's Future

AMD Strix Point, Strix Halo, Kraken

Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite

AMD Zen 5

Intel Arrow Lake

Nvidia Blackwell

AMD RDNA 4

AMD FSR vs Nvidia DLSS

How the latest Technology is Evolving Warfare

AI, Deepfakes, and Voice Cloning in Spycraft

Basically anything we usually discuss on Broken Silicon! :)

This is a very unique opportunity to ask some questions about subjects we usually don't touch on - so don't miss it! And also, remember that Matt can speak to almost any "standard" subject as well! You have ~24 hours (Till Afternoon US Central Time on 5/23/24) to submit below!  Just make sure you are respectful, use good grammar, and you are as concise as possible in order to have your submissions considered!

Last Episode the Guest was On: https://youtu.be/a1wTGgdAVGw

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/amd-fidelity-fx-fsr-20/4.html#:~:text=(198%20Comments)%20%C2%BB-,Conclusion,a%20huge%20win%20for%20AMD.

Comments

Prior is the theme 999

I didn’t even know the US government was switching. But what does that mean entirely? Like switching which cpus they have in their offices or is it deeper, like what cpus are being put into military projects like missiles, future aircraft carriers, or fighters. Maybe the M1 Abrams will finally get the retirement it needs.

10GHz Netburst

Are there security considerations that may motivate governments switching away from x86 to other ISAs like ARM for their servers or other hardware?

AI-Soldier789

Do AMD's ARM plans have anything to do with the decision from the US government, and will future AMD GPUs be affected by the compute cap for exports to China?

Christian Visconti

Hi Tom and Matt, question for Matt, I am not American so I know nothing about the US defence and structure, I hope this question makes sense. What is the opinion or the idea that the government/defence ministry has about the big 3 chip companies Intel, AMD and Nvidia? With all the AI booming and apparent interest in ARM architecture, do you believe the defence ministry and governance start to focus on those subjects too?

Intel FanBoy

Do defense contractors use off the shelf consumer HW for the weapon systems or do they make custom HW?

Sakosha

What role does Palantir play in AI defense & software? Is there any other company that is as prevalent in this regard?

Christian Visconti

What does the defence value the most on the subject of Silicon architecture/ technology ecc ecc? Does the most cost effective win the race or the most secure tech does?

10GHz Netburst

Would you say the intel security fiascos particularly with the likes of spectre/meltdown and MDS over the last decade or so have had an influence over the choice to switch to AMD? Are such side channel attacks considered a relevant threat vector for systems in government premises? Is there an acknowledgement that generally similar side-channel attacks will be something high performance microarchitectures will always suffer from as evidenced by ARM, Power and AMD x86 microarchitectures having the same or similar problems?

Cleansweep

How closely does the government, or at least your part of it, keep an eye on cybersecurity vulnerabilities in hardware? Is awareness just limited to stuff that hits the news, like Spectre/Meltdown, or are people keeping an eye on the latest research, like other branch prediction vulnerabilities?

Cleansweep

How do you feel about the local AI push from hardware vendors? Having local AI or even an AI server in each facility seems like a good way for government agency to get the potential productivity gains of AI, without having the privacy/confidentiality issues of relying on any of the cloud based services.

10GHz Netburst

Warfighting has rapidly grown more data driven with everything from the likes of Ukraine's app that lets anyone report drone sightings, to sensor fusion on 4.5 and 5th gen fighters, to drone swarms. Historically, military (and space) hardware typically involved bespoke, ruggedised systems built in smaller volumes with older electronics technology, how are the engineering tradeoffs being reconsidered now? Will militaries in advanced countries (e.g NATO) start to take more advantage of the latest nodes, off the shelf processors and other systems, mass produced civilian systems in their military hardware? Will hardware get replaced more often rather than being designed for several decades of service life?

10GHz Netburst

What other electronics related production do you think is important for the US to have domestically (or at least in the west) aside from leading edge process nodes from the likes of TSMC?

CompressedAIBlocks

Is RISC V on the radar for US Gov't or are they purely looking at x86/ARM?

TMCPayton

Howdy, How does the DoD's "Digital Transformation" initiatives and other large initives drive industry trends? From my experience, there's an increased emphasis on COTS (commercial off the shelf) hardware, Open Architecture driving software changes, increased importance of modeling and simulation. All of which point to increasing sales volumes of x86 hardware instesd of relying solely on VxWorks.

Independent George

Given the length and complexity of supply chains, how feasible is it really for either the US or China to disentangle itself from the other?

JR

Whoa, I don’t have a question. But this sounds like an awesome episode!

Kyle Harder

Do you think the government switching to "team red" will be source of McCarthyism finger pointing? Perhaps AMD will consider rebranding themselves as even more blue than Intel to secure government support.

Lazarus

Hi Tom and Matt! I'm interested in what Matt thinks about the chip ban especially how further developments in GPU/AI hardware will be handled by the US government. Is there any chance that this ban will be lifted or even widened in the near future? And how does the US monitor the success of said ban? Thank you for taking time to answer our questions.

Lazarus

I would like to hear Matt's opinion about military technology in use or development that will trickle down to the masses. Is it AI or is there any kind of "tech dark horse" that civilians typically don't know about to fundamentaly change our way of living like GPS or the internet did?

Trevor Renfro

In regards to AI/machine learning and security, how real is the threat of black hat hackers getting past account security measures (username, strong password, multi-factor authentication on websites that allow it; good password manager for usernames and passwords; average to above average device security) without counting the typical phishing and social engineering that many fall for? Also, is there a plan to have companies use better security? (Some still have the laughable 6 alphanumeric password limit, albeit rare to be quite that low, and some have no minimum password requirement at all.)

xpk20040228

How much supercomputer resource does the DOD has? I know that DOE own the majority of the supercomputers in the US, like the top 3 HPC in the world rn is in DOE labs. how does DOD's computing resource stack up againest that? and what DOD is using all these computing power for?

QuickJumper

Not to be political but concerning the war in Ukraine the sanctions in Europe and USA are aimed to prevent Russia building newest tanks and drones. Could you maybe specify what are the specific nodes and technologies they use?

10GHz Netburst

How would you assess the evolution of intelligence/counterintelligence in the last few years? Firstly, along the axis of transparency vs opacity of the information space and also along the axis of governments vs private people and organisations and their control over public perception? Is there another axis that you think is important to consider? What is the impact of the data driven world and the vast compute resources we have available now on intelligence networks, the information space, and how these are shaped?

10GHz Netburst

Is AMD a viable "second supplier" for GPGPU/AI to Nvidia? Is intel a viable third supplier? How important do you think it is for these potential alternatives to be available and do you think it would be beneficial if AMD or Intel could be elevated to the level of being a peer to Nvidia rather than trailing them?

10GHz Netburst

Previous Nvidia GPGPU systems used Intel and later AMD CPUs at their core, how does Nvidia's position change when they offer such systems with only Nvidia IP in them?

10GHz Netburst

In a number of military systems, notably the LCS and F22, the fact the government didn't own the IP of the systems and had to rely on the supplier to perform maintenance and upgrades has become a major sticking point and affected the readiness of the platforms. Do you think that this could also be an issue for computer systems, especially with how compute is moving more towards the edge in the military space?

Nicolas Terroir

Hello Matt and Tom, should we be afraid of the evolution of the technology in modern warfare? Is robot and computer going to take over warfare? I don't see a terminator army but some kind of mainframe like in the TV show person of the interest seems possible.

Nicolas Terroir

In recent news, amd quarterly results have been over analyse by many channels. The reason is that the earnings are not very good in the gaming graphics. It seems that the media are more focused on AMD bad news than any other company. Why AMD seems to always bad PR from the media? Is AMD have a reputation problem? Does it affect the industrial side of AMD?

Nicolas Terroir

With the rise of AI and VFX tools, is deep fakes going to be impossible to recognize? Do tools existed to counter those fakes?

Nicolas Terroir

In every other day, we are hearing about cyber attacks, how the defense keeps up to date all of its systems?

Nicolas Terroir

Without any warning, Amd just release anti lag 2. Do you think that AMD is on part with Nvidia feature, now? Do you now if there was any information to the media? There almost zero article about that.

Dylan M

Hi Matt and Tom. How much of a barrier do you think compatibility will be for ARM? Will the Mac help? Could a future NVIDIA CPU help? Could NVIDIA force their partners to support it, or could a translation layer be good enough?

Dylan M

Hi Matt, do you think the US government is interested in moving to / supporting ARM to be less reliant on Intel/AMD?

Nicholas Buckner

How interested is the government in replacing binary blobs in BIOSes and firmware with open source code?

QuickJumper

Hi, shouldn't the US rectrictions on China be even stricter? 4080 is still pretty powerful card. Wouldn't it make more sense if the limit was around 4060 performance level? It's still a lot more than what China's internal capacities can offer.

Chris Rijk

AMD seems to be doing fine on government supercomputers but what about everyday PCs? Are they making inroads at all in desktops and laptops within government?

Chris Rijk

AMD designed the MI300A accelerator for the El Capitan supercomputer, sponsored by the Department of Energy. What do you think of the design choices and would you expect the Department of Defence to want something similar or more bespoke? In general, do you think there is much demand for bespoke supercomputers or are they all used for so many different tasks that having something more general purpose is better?

Chris Rijk

Are AI powered drones the future of warfare?

AnotherChris

In a world where AI is deemed as powerful as a tank , how valuable does a company like Palantir become?