amx VS llama-dl

I am talking about the matrix/vector coprocessor (AMX). You can find some reverse-engineered documentation here: https://github.com/corsix/amx

On M3 a singe matrix block can achieve ~ 1TFLOP on DGEMM, I assume it will be closer to 4TFLOPS for SGEMM. The Max variants have two such blocks. Didn't do precise benchmarking myself, but switching Python/R matrix libraries to use Apple's BLAS result in 5-6x perf improvement on matrix heavy code for me.

It's really cool. I hope it becomes more common for training/inference/numerics capable accelerators to be included in consumer hardware.

Apple's AMX is really under-documented, while the instructions were reverse engineered, Virtually no benchmarks are available comparing current chip generations, models and variants.

https://github.com/corsix/amx

Visible in the unofficial documentation for AMX instructions too - M2 only bf16 functionality - https://github.com/corsix/amx/blob/main/matfp.md

Confusingly there are 2 mechanisms to do matrix operations on the new apple hardware - AMX (https://github.com/corsix/amx) - and the ANE (apple neural engine) - which is enabled by CoreML. This code does not run on the neural engine but the author has a branch for his whisper.cpp project which uses it here: https://github.com/ggerganov/whisper.cpp/pull/566 - so it may not be long before we see it applied here as well. All of this is to say that it actually could get significantly faster if some of this work was able to be handed to the ANE with CoreML.

really? seems pretty well documented here: https://github.com/corsix/amx

Article is almost two years old, and has a huge correction at the bottom. It's just a proprietary ISA extension, there's even a repo documenting what's been reverse engineered.

You are correct, in that those are the four

My understanding is that the AMX is more tightly wound with the CPU, ultimately being accessible via an instruction set (https://github.com/corsix/amx), and it is useful if you need to do matrix multiplications interleaved with other CPU tasks. A common example would be a VIO loop or something where you want that data in the CPU caches.

The GPU and Neural Engine are not that – they take some time to set up and initialize. They also can parallelize tasks to a much higher degree. The GPU is more generalizable, because you can write compute shaders to do anything in parallel, but it uses a lot of resources. I'll have to check out the PR to see how exactly the MPS shaders match up with the task at hand, because you could also consider writing Metal compute shaders by hand.

I know the least about the ANE, but it has specific hardware for running ML models, and you have to process the weights ahead of time to make sure they are in the right format. It can run ML models very efficiently and is the most battery friendly.

If someone were to build a Linux system with proprietary ISA extensions, how would they do it given Linux is open source? Are there any examples of this being done? Would it be possible at all?

I got inspiration from this (https://github.com/corsix/amx) and I wondered if someone has done it before on a Linux-based system. I understand a userspace library could be created to access those instructions from userspace, but how would then they be implemented in the kernel? Through a proprietary kernel module built using a custom compiler? Or is that not needed at all and the library could just run on the processor taking advantage of the proprietary extensions?

There seems to be some confusion here. Let me step in as someone who has gone through this.

My repo https://github.com/shawwn/llama-dl was taken down last March by Facebook. They asserted copyright over LLaMA, which is obviously bogus since it was trained on data they do not own the copyright to. I was bummed about this, but after I mentioned on HN that I was willing to fight Meta, an anonymous person named L contacted me and sent $20k of Monero to cover legal fees. I was also contacted by an amazing lawyer who wanted to represent me in this. I was absurdly fortunate on both counts.

He drafted a counternotice, we sent it, and then my repo was restored within a week or so.

GitHub had no choice in the matter. Legally this is a required process. Ditto for GitLab. Both are US companies.

When YouTube-dl was taken down some time ago by a DMCA, Nat went to bat and got it restored, and GitHub made some sort of pledge to cover legal fees associated with bogus takedown requests.

Here’s the shitty part for this particular situation. A case can be made that the emulator is for the purpose of circumventing copyright protection mechanisms. This, sadly, is a solid legal basis for issuing a lawful takedown, as much as we all absolutely despise that idea. It’s pretty clear cut; Nintendo doesn’t want Switch games to be run on non-Nintendo platforms, and the emulator seeks to enable Switch games to be run on any platform. Therefore, the intent of the emulator is to circumvent Nintendo’s protection mechanisms.

So where does this leave us? Well, the team can file a counternotice. GitLab will restore the repo. But that opens up the team to a lawsuit by Nintendo. And as much as I want to stand up to bullies, there’s a difference between standing up to a guy shoving a kid in a locker vs standing up to a Silverback gorilla charging at you. Nintendo’s legal history implies the latter.

Welcome to Nintendo pain. The Smash community has been dealing with Nintendo’s BS for decades now. They shut down tournaments that use emulators for Smash Melee. And no one can do anything, because it’s their legal right to do so.

Your philosophical argument is interesting, but what the op was saying was one of the linked repos in inaccessible due to DMCA: https://github.com/shawwn/llama-dl

So while what you say may be true the DMCA seems to have worth for these orgs because they can get code removed by the host, who is uninterested in litigating, and the repo owner likely is even less capable of litigating the DMCA.

Unfortunately as a tool of fear and legal gridlock DMCA has shown itself to be very useful to those with ill intent.

Here are some useful links: https://github.com/shawwn/llama-dl and https://rentry.org/llama-tard-v2#tips-and-tricks

Sure. You can get models with magnet link from here https://github.com/shawwn/llama-dl/

To get running, just follow these steps https://github.com/ggerganov/llama.cpp/#usage

https://rentry.org/llama-tard-v2#tips-and-tricks https://github.com/shawwn/llama-dl