• misk@piefed.socialOP
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      22 hours ago

      These things run on rather specialised SoCs so it’s not like somebody is going to buy them wholesale to train machine learning models. Valve already monopolised PC gaming market so there’s nowhere to run with that hardware really.

      • bitfucker@programming.dev
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        13 hours ago

        Idk about that. There are many uses for compute units beside training. Inference may still be possible. But also, I’m just remembering that time the PS3 was used as a super computer. If general purpose compute hardware is subsidized, I think gamers won’t be able to get it and instead it will get to the hands of corporations or research institutes for cheap compute hardware. Why spend 1k to get a sub-par machine when you can get the same one with say $500 (if valve subsidize it)

        • misk@piefed.socialOP
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          12 hours ago

          PS3s had native Sony-sanctioned Linux support at the time - it was marketing for computational prowess of Cell processor. Funnily enough removing it as an anti-piracy measure was what prompted community to jailbreak PS3. Steam Machine doesn’t offer anything nearly as attractive, it’s just a PC and inference requires way more VRAM than it offers (8GB which is pretty awful for modern games too).