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Posted by timmyd 1 day ago

Qualcomm to Acquire Modular(www.reuters.com)
https://investor.qualcomm.com/news-events/press-releases/new...

https://www.modular.com/blog/qualcomm-to-acquire-modular

https://x.com/clattner_llvm/status/2069769232477192354, https://xcancel.com/clattner_llvm/status/2069769232477192354

234 points | 97 commentspage 2
YuechenLi 21 hours ago|
I honestly think Mojo would be better served if it is just a high-level language for GPU programming that compiles down to PTX with clear Python/Rust interop boundaries instead of trying for the "one language, multiple computational model" thing that they seem to be going for. The programming model between CPU and GPU programming is very different: code that runs best on CPU with heavy branching behaviors should not be written the same way as massively parallel matrix multiplication oriented GPU code, which I think they will be forced to do in the MLIR level anyway.

So, you end up with a language that looks like Python, but doesn't behave like Python, and companies that adopt Mojo early with the promise of Python compatibility may find themselves running into edge cases with difficult to trace compiler error messages that would be nearly impossible to debug, especially with the addition of Zig style `comptime` as their metaprogramming model.

carterschonwald 2 hours ago||
so the most notoriously patent oriented tech firm is buying this up. lol ;)

good for the founders. also explains why my resume got dropped on the floor as a desk reject :p

markkitti 16 hours ago||
Yesterday, LineShine a supercomputer in China emerges as #1 in the Top500 using ARM v9 based chips and no GPUs. Today, Qualcomm a premier designer of ARMv9 licensed chips in the United States acquires Modular, who has been creating a compiler stack that provides an alternative to NVIDIA's CUDA stack.

Are you ready for Qualcomm ARMv9 powered inference running Mojo/MAX written kernels doing low-cost inference at scale for AI?

IMcD23 12 hours ago|
Are you a bot?
dwa3592 20 hours ago||
Has anyone used mojo/modular extensively in their work? I installed it as soon as it was available but never went past the toy examples.
disgruntledphd2 10 hours ago||
I have a friend who is doing stuff with it, and he's incredibly excited about it, which is definitely a good sign.

I was really excited about it at launch, but its proprietary nature put me off.

amoshebb 8 hours ago||
I tried, also all a little while ago, really found the puzzles fun to do and then tried to implement some basic radar pipeline things and found lots of just basic 'building blocks' for signal processing (i/o things, fft) were missing to the point I went back to JAX.

I'm still not manage memory on GPU the way I would like, but mojo (or, my ignorant first stab at it) did not let me exploit direct DMA type things anyway.

fnands 6 hours ago||
What radar pipelines are you working on (out of pure curiosity here)
cisrockandroll 5 hours ago||
RIP Modular
revengerwizard 1 day ago||
Oh, that is unexpected... I tried applying for a position at Modular a few days ago.
fishgoesblub 17 hours ago||
Welp, I think I can give up on my hope for Mojo.
mlazos 9 hours ago||
Wtf? What a joke, but I mean the best way to become a billionaire is convince someone with a billion dollars to give it to you. This is actually insane, wow. I guess Qualcomm is desperate? Nobody was bidding for this, but congrats to the team at modular?! I’m actually salty about this because like I don’t feel like mojo was even good after trying it out.
WhereIsTheTruth 23 hours ago|
Of all possible acquirers, Qualcomm is the worst outcome for Mojo, rip
afr0ck 23 hours ago||
Why you say that? Nuvia made a massively great success with Oryon CPUs which are now all over the place.
re-thc 18 hours ago|||
> Nuvia made a massively great success

Not true. Nuvia has had huge delays as part of the acquisition. It resulted in ARM licensing lawsuits and many more and things dragged out.

refulgentis 15 hours ago||
Yes, ARM sued Qualcomm, Qualcomm won, and separately Nuvia has shipped, 2, 3? times now? I don't know how it's a failure or if the delay were "huge" and "dragged out". It's not like it launched an old product or took years and years and years. 39 months between acquisition and Snapdragon X Elite being available for purchase.
re-thc 14 hours ago||
> 39 months between acquisition and Snapdragon X Elite being available for purchase.

Yes a world of a difference. That’s competing against an Apple M2 vs M4. You’ve given yourself 2 generations of disadvantage.

You’re equivalent of saying the Intel delays were a success too.

refulgentis 14 hours ago||
> You’re equivalent of saying the Intel delays were a success too.

If Trump nuked TSMC's production lines the day before M1 went to production, and the production lines came back 3 years later, would Apple ship the M1 on it? Or, the M3?

As you point out, it makes 0 sense to ship the M1.

If it makes 0 sense, why project that idea onto me?

When faced with a contradiction, first, check your premises. (and read your interlocutor's, "It's not like it launched an old product" obviates your claim that I'd also applaud Intel's delays)

re-thc 13 hours ago||
> As you point out, it makes 0 sense to ship the M1.

But that's what happened. Go check the benchmarks. Clearly you haven't. That Snapdragon X that got released (1st gen) was way off the mark.

> When faced with a contradiction

When faced with a hallucination...

refulgentis 1 hour ago||
You switched your claim from "they released the same chip they would have released 3 years earlier and you're stupid for thinking that was a good idea" to "I thought it was slow [because I'm hyperfocused on Apple competition and forgot the perf vs. Intel/AMD]".
sipjca 12 hours ago|||
Hasn't pretty much everyone from Nuvia left QC at this point?
bigyabai 20 hours ago||
Nvidia wasn't going to buy them. Unless Mojo intended to compete toe-to-toe in the hardware space, they were destined to get bought out by a hardware underdog at some point or another.

This is where an industry-spanning consortium would have helped out, but Mojo never really built those inroads with the hardware space. They just expected everyone else to opt-in to their mercurial middleware, which is a fundamental misunderstanding of how and why CUDA is successful.

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