> any factor of 10 being a new science / new product category,

I often remind people two orders of quantitative change is a qualitative change.

> The thing that I’m really very skeptical of is the 2 month turnaround. To get leading edge geometry turned around on arbitrary 2 month schedules is .. ambitious. Hopeful. We could use other words as well.

The real product they have is automation. They figured out a way to compile a large model into a circuit. That's, in itself, pretty impressive. If they can do this, they can also compile models to an HDL and deploy them to large FPGA simulators for quick validation. If we see models maturing at a "good enough" state, even a longer turnaround between model release and silicon makes sense.

While I also see lots of these systems running standalone, I think they'll really shine combined with more flexible inference engines, running the unchanging parts of the model while the coupled inference engine deals with whatever is too new to have been baked into silicon.

I'm concerned with the environmental impact. Chip manufacture is not very clean and these chips will need to be swapped out and replaced at a cadence higher than we currently do with GPUs.

Having dabbled in VLSI in the early-2010s, half the battle is getting a manufacturing slot with TSMC. It’s a dark art with secret handshakes. This demonstrator chip is an enormous accomplishment.

There might be a foodchain of lower order uses when they become "obsolete".