The whole thing is imaginary: "In this paper, we propose Chiplet Cloud, a chiplet-based ASIC AI-supercomputer architecture that optimizes total cost of ownership
(TCO) per generated token for serving large generative language
models to reduce the overall cost to deploy and run these applica-
tions in the real world."
So they are comparing actual implementations with a theoretical implementation. Never mind that they got the A100 figures wrong, they are still in the 'wouldn't it be nice if we had 'x'' stage. This looks like a paper whose sole purpose is to raise funds for a research project that will probably ultimately go nowhere and they needed a reason that looks good on paper to increase their chances of getting funded. A100 can already be had for $0.87/hour so even their theoretical advantage is under significant pressure and assuming they got everything else right by the time the project has run the market will have overtaken them. This is what usually happens to CPUs that are application specific.
Sure, to me it more of an extra item than the main one but it is one that you can readily verify because most of the other claims are far more vague. If they're willing to fudge on that one then I have much less confidence in the rest of their claims.
Yeah, it is an architectural simulation study, this is what is usually done right at the beginning before resources are allocated to go deep on idea. So in that sense it is imaginary; but this is how new ideas get incubated.
take 3 ideas that are hot: chiplets, cloud, and LLM - remix them into the title of a paper that describes a hypothetical machine.. academia playing catch up and trying to stay relevant in my cynical eye.
I asked gpt for giggles and the comparison is much more thorough, it has written also power per watt improvements, benefits of denser packing, and sustainability of moving toward more energy efficient solution.
So they are comparing actual implementations with a theoretical implementation. Never mind that they got the A100 figures wrong, they are still in the 'wouldn't it be nice if we had 'x'' stage. This looks like a paper whose sole purpose is to raise funds for a research project that will probably ultimately go nowhere and they needed a reason that looks good on paper to increase their chances of getting funded. A100 can already be had for $0.87/hour so even their theoretical advantage is under significant pressure and assuming they got everything else right by the time the project has run the market will have overtaken them. This is what usually happens to CPUs that are application specific.