Mapping
the Open
Territory
Mapping the
Open Territory
AI is changing the laws that once governed computing.
Until recently, Bell’s Law gave us an accurate frame for understanding computing revolutions, stating that each decade a new class of computing emerges, resulting in a fundamental shift in access.
We went from mainframes in the 1950s, to minicomputers in the 1960s, to super computers in the 1970s, to personal computers in the 1980s, to the world-wide web in the 1990s, and mobile in the 2000s.
These revolutions allowed us to make computers that were much more accessible – simultaneously driving performance up 10x while also driving cost down 10x. In 1981, a fully loaded IBM PC cost $4500. Today, an iPhone, which is many millions of times faster, retails for $1,129. Through this process we got very good at building very powerful computers with very small chips.
AI is changing the laws that once governed computing.
AI is valuable enough to warrant this kind of investment. It is literally, as Andrej Karpathy said, “Software 2.0”.
It isn’t just an efficiency gain, like previous revolutions. AI creates knowledge that we didn’t have before. It is unprecedented how quickly AI can navigate nearly inconceivable amounts of data and complexity. It will ask questions we didn’t even know to ask. It will destroy previous industries and create new ones. Those that know how to leverage it, and can afford to, will reap the rewards.
But we can’t assume that we’ll return to the historical trend of falling costs and broadening access. We're at a critical juncture. As companies build out their AI stack, they are making a choice today that will determine the future. Companies can invest in closed systems, further concentrating leverage in the hands of a few players, or they can retain agency by investing in open systems, which are affordable, transparent, and modifiable.
But we can’t assume that we’ll return to the historical trend of falling costs and broadening access. We're at a critical juncture. As companies build out their AI stack, they are making a choice today that will determine the future.
This isn’t the first time we’ve been presented with a choice between a closed or open future. In fact, we’re living in a closed world today because of choices made for us 40+ years ago. Early minicomputer and PC culture was dominated by a hacker ethos defined by “access to computers… and the Hands-On Imperative.” By the late 90s and early 00s, PC development became dominated by Windows and Intel at the cost of limiting innovation while hamstringingcompetitors and partners alike.
Just look at WinTel’s OEM partners, like Compaq, which struggled to hit 5% operating margins in the late 90s, according to SEC filings. Dell, during the same time period, absolutely revolutionized supply chains, and typically enjoyed margins around 10%. Compare this to Microsoft and Intel, which often tripled or quadrupled those figures in the same period, with Microsoft hitting 50.2% margins in 1999. Some have jokingly referred to this as drug dealer margins. In 2001, Windows had >90% market share, and almost 25 years later, it still has >70% market share.
How do closed worlds form? One word: swamps. A swamp is a moat gone stagnant from incumbents who have forgotten how to innovate.
Closed World > WHO IS able to innovate?
Figure 1. Closed
No leverage or choice in dealings.
Figure 2. Proprietary
No control of roadmap or features while incurring higher development and product costs.
Figure 3. Open
You drive and control the future.
The writing is on the wall for AI. We are veering towards a closed world where the constellation of technology companies are fighting over scraps. Competition, innovation, and sustainable business can’t thrive in this low-oxygen environment.
How do closed worlds form? One word: swamps. A swamp is a moat gone stagnant from incumbents who have forgotten how to innovate.
There are many ways to produce a swamp. They can protect a product by overcomplicating it, adding unnecessary proprietary systems and layers of abstraction. They can charge rents, in the form of license fees. They can pile on features just enough to justify an upgrade to customers, while staying disconnected from what they actually need. And if they want to get really clever, they can offer something “for free” as an inseparable part of a bundled service in order to lock out competition.
However it happens, what started as innovation becomes just an extra tax on the product, erecting monopolies instead of creating real value. These companies become incentivized to preserve the status quo, rather than changing.
But, as we’ve seen before, the world always changes.
Open source has a way of infiltrating crucial computing applications. The internet runs on it. The entire AI research stack uses open source frameworks. Even proprietary tech relies on it with 90% of Fortune 500 companies using open source software. There wouldn’t be macOS without BSD Unix, Azure without Linux, or Netflix without FFmpeg.
Open source and its hardware equivalent, open standards, have repeatedly catalyzed mass adoption by reducing friction and enabling interoperability. Robert Metcalf says the openness of ethernet allowed it to beat rival standards. DRAM enabled the mass adoption of PCs with high-capacity, low-cost memory, while PCIe enabled high-speed interoperability of PC components. Similarly, Open Compute Project specs, used by Meta and Microsoft among others, standardized rack and server design, so components could be modular and vendor-agnostic.
RISC-V is the hardware equivalent of Linux for AI hardware.
The AI Stack > Closed Today
The AI Stack > Open Future
TRY ME >>>>>>>>
Today, parts of the AI stack are open, parts are closed, and parts have yet to be decided. Let’s look at a few of the layers:
Most hardware today is a black box, literally. You’re reliant on a company to fix, optimize, and, at times, even implement your workloads.
Most parallelization software is proprietary causing unnecessary lock-in and massive switching costs.
Models are mixed, but most of the leading ones are closed. The models that are open share limited data, with little to no support, and have no promises of staying open in the future.
Even if an application is using an open source model, most are built using cloud platform APIs. This means your data is being pooled to train the next gen models.
The current stack tells a story of closed engulfing open, stopping innovation in its tracks – a classic swamp.
Opening up AI hardware, with open standards like RISC-V, and its associated software would trigger a domino effect upstream. It would enable “a world where mainstream technology can be influenced, even revolutionized, out of left field.” This means a richer future with more experimentation and more breakthroughs we can barely imagine today, like personalized cancer vaccines, natural disaster prediction, and abundant energy. And this world gets here a lot faster outside of a swamp.
There’s an old Silicon Valley adage – if you aren’t paying you are the product. In AI, we’ve been paying steeply for the product, but we still are the product. We have collectively generated the information being used to train AI, and are feeding it more every day.
In a closed world, AI owns everything, and that AI is owned by a few. Opening up hardware and software means a future where AI doesn’t own you.
Part 4
Building an Open Future
At Tenstorrent, we're committed to building an open future for AI.
Open can mean a lot of things. For us, open means affordable, transparent, and modifiable.
Affordable
AI hardware shouldn’t be a luxury product. Universal access to intelligence requires reasonable costs. The future deserves a proliferation of AI applications, not just a few businesses capable of surviving on tiny margins thinned by monopoly rents.
Transparent
You don’t really own it unless you understand what you own, which is why we don’t sell black boxes. Our hardware is built on open standards, with each layer of the stack built from first principles for complete navigability resulting in transparency.
Modifiable
You should be able to choose what you want and what you don’t want. Open shouldn’t be another form of control. It should empower you to create your own tech stack that suits your specific needs.
It will not be easy to achieve this open future. Hardware resists openness, and software isn’t exempt either. Most developers rely on copyright law, which is automatic and offers the same protection for paintings and songs. Change a few lines of code, or a shape in a drawing, and it’s a new work. Software patents muddy the waters, locking down broad concepts with vague claims. And hardware’s worse where patents are the default. Surmounting the burden of patent law means we need to create a full-stack hardware and software company, or create a consortium of companies.
We, at Tenstorrent, are doing both.
To that end, we’re building up organizational excellence across multiple verticals from hardware to software because if we don’t, then closed systems will continue to block innovation. It’s necessary that the entire stack be open, otherwise we’ll remain in the swamp we’re in today.
We are also opening up our technology. Our IP is transparent, our architectures are open, and our software is open source so you can edit, select, fork, and own your silicon future.
Join us.
