How DeepSeek Cuts AI Costs: From Homegrown Tech to Desert Power

Author(s): Don Lim

Originally published on Towards AI.

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DeepSeek doesn’t rely on NVIDIA chips for inference. They also don’t solely use Western AI development frameworks like PyTorch and TensorFlow. This was a big shock to me as well, as I hadn’t paid too much attention to China’s software industry until recently. I’ve been developing software for several decades now, but the only software from China that I used was Filmora and face beautifying apps.

A Blue Whale Doll in My Hand — This doll was in my house for a long time. I don’t know where it came from.

The Magnificent 7 (Mag7) companies can utilize similar optimization techniques as DeepSeek and save on electricity in remote locations. However, they won’t be able to escape NVIDIA’s influence, since they all use critical AI development frameworks called PyTorch and TensorFlow, which are currently dependent on NVIDIA chips.

Almost all Large Language Models (LLMs) use PyTorch (developed by Facebook) and TensorFlow (developed by Google) as development platforms or frameworks. These frameworks are specifically designed to handle the intensive vector and matrix calculations required for training and running large-scale neural networks. The developers of PyTorch and TensorFlow have been working with NVIDIA for… Read the full blog for free on Medium.

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Published via Towards AI