Tiny Corp. Prepping Separate AMD & NVIDIA GPU-based AI Compute Systems

George Hotz and his startup operation (Tiny Corporation) appeared ready to completely abandon AMD Radeon GPUs last week, after experiencing a period of firmware-related headaches. The original plan involved the development of a pre-orderable $15,000 TinyBox AI compute cluster that housed six XFX Speedster MERC310 RX 7900 XTX graphics cards, but software/driver issues prompted experimentation via alternative hardware routes. A lot of media coverage has focused on the unusual adoption of consumer-grade GPUs—Tiny Corp.’s struggles with RDNA 3 (rather than CDNA 3) were maneuvered further into public view, after top AMD brass pitched in.

The startup’s social media feed is very transparent about showcasing everyday tasks, problem-solving and important decision-making. Several Acer Predator BiFrost Arc A770 OC cards were purchased and promptly integrated into a colorfully-lit TinyBox prototype, but Hotz & Co. swiftly moved onto Team Green pastures. Tiny Corp. has begrudgingly adopted NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 GPUs. Earlier today, it was announced that work on the AMD-based system has resumed—although customers were forewarned about anticipated teething problems. The surprising message arrived in the early hours: “a hard to find ‘umr’ repo has turned around the feasibility of the AMD TinyBox. It will be a journey, but it gives us an ability to debug. We’re going to sell both, red for $15,000 and green for $25,000. When you realize your pre-order you’ll choose your color. Website has been updated. If you like to tinker and feel pain, buy red. The driver still crashes the GPU and hangs sometimes, but we can work together to improve it.”

Tiny Corp. recommends that potential clients spend a little extra on a stable NVIDIA Ada Lovelace-based system, but work will continue on ironing out nitty-gritty details with AMD engineers—today’s tweet outlined a short roadmap: “going to start documenting the Radeon RX 7900 XTX GPU, and we’re going right to the kernel in tinygrad with a KFD backend. Also, expect an announcement from AMD, it’s not everything we asked for, but it’s a start. If you want ‘it just works’ buy green. You pay the tax, but it’s rock solid. Not too much more to say about it. Compare to more expensive 6x GeForce RTX 4090 boxes elsewhere. Hopefully we get both colors of TinyBox on MLPerf in June.” It is not clear, at the time of writing, whether the Intel-based TinyBox will be prepped for pre-orders.