George Hotz and his startup operation (Tiny Corporation) appeared ready to completely abandon AMD Radeon GPUs last week, after experiencing a period of firmware-related headaches. The original plan involved the development of a pre-orderable $15,000 TinyBox AI compute cluster that housed six XFX Speedster MERC310 RX 7900 XTX graphics cards, but software/driver issues prompted experimentation via alternative hardware routes. A lot of media coverage has focused on the unusual adoption of consumer-grade GPUs—Tiny Corp.'s struggles with RDNA 3 (rather than CDNA 3) were maneuvered further into public view, after top AMD brass pitched in.

The startup's social media feed is very transparent about showcasing everyday tasks, problem-solving and important decision-making. Several Acer Predator BiFrost Arc A770 OC cards were purchased and promptly integrated into a colorfully-lit TinyBox prototype, but Hotz & Co. swiftly moved onto Team Green pastures. Tiny Corp. has begrudgingly adopted NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 GPUs. Earlier today, it was announced that work on the AMD-based system has resumed—although customers were forewarned about anticipated teething problems. The surprising message arrived in the early hours: "a hard to find 'umr' repo has turned around the feasibility of the AMD TinyBox. It will be a journey, but it gives us an ability to debug. We're going to sell both, red for $15,000 and green for $25,000. When you realize your pre-order you'll choose your color. Website has been updated. If you like to tinker and feel pain, buy red. The driver still crashes the GPU and hangs sometimes, but we can work together to improve it."

Tiny Corp., a neural network framework specialist, has revealed intimate details about the ongoing development and building of its "tinybox" system: "I don't think there's much value in secrecy. We have the parts to build 12 boxes and a case that's pretty close to final. Beating back all the PCI-E AER errors was hard, as anyone knows who has tried to build a system like this. Our BOM cost is around $10k, and we are selling them for $15k. We've put a year of engineering into this, it's a lot harder than it first seemed. You are welcome to believe me or not, but unless you are building in huge quantity, you are getting a great deal for $15k." The startup has taken the unusual step of integrating Team Red's current flagship gaming GPU into its AI-crunching platform. Tiny Corp. founder—George Hotz—has documented his past rejections of NVIDIA AI hardware on social media, but TinyBox will not be running AMD's latest Instinct MI300X accelerators. RDNA 3.0 is seemingly favored over CDNA 3.0—perhaps due to growing industry demand for enterprise-grade GPUs.

The rack-mounted 12U TinyBox build houses an AMD EPYC 7532 processor with 128 GB of system memory. Five 1 TB SN850X SSDs take care of storage duties (4 in raid, 1 for boot), and an unoccupied 16x OCP 3.0 slot is designated for networking tasks Two 1600 W PSUs provide necessary electrical juice. The Tiny Corp. social media picture feed indicates that they have acquired a pile of XFX Speedster MERC310 RX 7900 XTX graphics cards—six units are hooked up inside of each TinyBox system. Hotz's young startup has ambitious plans: "The system image shipping with the box will be Ubuntu 22.04. It will only include tinygrad out of the box, but PyTorch and JAX support on AMD have come a long way, and your hardware is your hardware. We make money either way, you are welcome to buy it for any purpose. The goal of the tiny corp is to commoditize the petaflop, and we believe tinygrad is the best way to do it. Solving problems in software is cheaper than in hardware. tinygrad will elucidate the deep structure of what neural networks are. We have 583 preorders, and next week we'll place an order for 100 sets of parts. This is $1M in outlay. We will also ship five of the 12 boxes we have to a few early people who I've communicated with. For everyone else, they start shipping in April. The production line started running yesterday."

New Eiswolf 2 AiO - now also for custom designs of the RX 7900XT/XTX GPUs! Alphacool expands its product range and enables the cooling of AMD's RX 7900XT/XTX graphics cards with the innovative Fullcover GPU AIO water cooler. The enormous waste heat from the new generation of graphics cards is dissipated excellently with these coolers. The very good water flow and the large cooling surface are the result of the particularly filigree fin structure. The jet plate with revised inflow engine also distributes the water perfectly over the cooling fins. The full-surface chrome plating of the cooler not only offers resistant protection against acids, scratches and damage, but also achieves a beautiful homogeneity and exceptional shine. The Aurora design of the cooler impresses with its visually calm and simple design as well as the wonderfully uniform lighting, which is achieved via digitally addressable RGB LEDs.

The expandable Eiswolf 2 delivers an all-round carefree package and ensures that its user can easily access a performance-oriented GPU water cooling system out-of-the-box. Also included are the NexXxos ST30 360 mm radiator, the Rise Aurora 120 mm fans, DC-LT 2 pump and TPV hoses with quick-release coupling.
The Eiswolf 2 AiO - 360 mm for RX 7900XT Reference and RX 7900XTX Merc 310 are now available in the Alphacool online store.

XFX has revealed its own Radeon RX 7800 XT and Radeon RX 7700 XT lineup, showing off a total of three SKUs. These include the Radeon RX 7800 XT QICK 319 Core Edition, the Radeon RX 7800 XT MERC 319 Black Edition, and the Radeon RX 7700 XT QICK 319 Black Edition. Interestingly, XFX is skipping AMD's reference design, and focusing on its own custom design for all models. The entire lineup is a part of XFX's Speedster series, with a clean design with "the sole purpose of maximizing airflow to improve cooling and performance."

Unfortunately, XFX has yet to disclose full specifications, so game and boost clocks are still listed as TBA for both the Radeon RX 7800 XT and the Radeon RX 7700 XT models. In terms of design, the XFX Radeon RX 7800 XT QICK features a triple-fan 2.5-slot design with 13 blades and a vented aluminium backplate. It also has a dual BIOS feature. The XFX Radeon RX 7800 XT MERC 319 Black Edition is listed to feature a 2.75-slot triple fan cooler with Vapor Chamber technology, a premium one-piece aluminium stamp cover, and a different and larger direct pass-through venting backplate. It will also feature dual BIOS and, according to specifications, a better dedicated 9-phase GPU VRM. The Radeon RX 7700 XT QICK 319 Black Edition is similar with a 2.5-slot triple fan cooler but has a slightly different design.