The TinyBox AI systems by startup TinyCorp have now hit retail, offering AMD's Radeon RX 7900 XTX & NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4090 configurations.
TinyBox AI Mini Stations Finally Make Debut In The Retail Markets; $15K For AMD & $25K For NVIDIA Systems
TinyCorp was quite famous in the markets a few months ago for many reasons, but basically, the firm's ambition is to bring AI computing power into the hands of individuals who are unable to offer large AI clusters from companies like NVIDIA. TinyCorp aims to provide AI processing capabilities to users by utilizing flagship consumer GPUs available in the industry after fine-tuning them to enhance the AI performance of the hardware onboard.
Interestingly, TinyGrad's CEO, George Hotz, came on X to reveal the news that the company's TinyBox AI systems are now available to the general public, as previously, they were in the testing phase and were accessible to a few vendors out there. The firm has decided to offer both AMD and NVIDIA options with their TinyBox systems, giving users the choice to choose from whomever they would prefer to go with, although the key difference between the available configurations is only the GPU architecture and its respective performance figures.
18 months in to the company, tinyboxes finally have a buy it now button! We have 13 in stock today, go to our website (link on @__tinygrad__) to buy one.
The $15k tinybox red is the best perf/$ ML box in the world. It's fully networkable, so that's the metric that matters. pic.twitter.com/gFxc873Q1y
— George Hotz 🌑 (@realGeorgeHotz) August 26, 2024
TinyCorp offers TinyBox "Red" and TinyBox "Green", with the titles associated with the respective GPU vendor onboard.George says that the "Red" variant offers the best value to consumers in terms of the performance you are getting, and as of now, the company has 13 units ready to be sold to the public. However, the pricing structure of the TinyBox configurations is indeed questionable, given that the "Red" model is available for $15,000 while the "Green" counterpart goes for $25,000, which is certainly a huge bump.
| red (AMD) | green (NVIDIA) | |
| TFLOPS | 738 FP16 TFLOPS | 991 FP16 TFLOPS |
| GPU Model | 6x 7900XTX | 6x 4090 |
| GPU RAM | 144 GB | |
| GPU RAM bandwidth | 5760 GB/s | 6050 GB/s |
| GPU link bandwidth | 6x PCIe 4.0 x16 (64 GB/s) | |
| CPU | 32 core AMD EPYC | |
| System RAM | 128 GB | |
| System RAM bandwidth | 204.8 GB/s | |
| Disk size | 4 TB raid array + 1 TB boot | |
| Disk read bandwidth | 28.7 GB/s | |
| Networking | 2x 1 GbE + open OCP3.0 slot (up to 200 GbE) | |
| Noise | < 50 dB, 31 low speed fans | |
| Power Supply | 2x 1600W, 100V~240V | |
| BMC | AST2500 | |
| Operating System | Ubuntu 22.04 | |
| Dimensions | 12U, 16.25" deep, 90 lbs | |
| Rack? | Freestanding or rack mount | |
| Driver Quality | Acceptable | Great |
| NOW SHIPPING | BUY FOR $15,000 | BUY FOR $25,000 |
Apart from being famous for its AI-focused computing units, TinyCorp was met with a bit of controversy with AMD, with the startup demanding Team Red to open-source some of its resources to sustain the enablement with these units, but in a twist, AMD apparently declined their request, which was why the company said that they were looking towards introducing Intel/NVIDIA options. While Intel is to be found nowhere, it's glad that AMD debuted in these systems, since the hype was quite a bit when TinyBox AI systems were initially disclosed.
TinyCorp targets small-scale startups looking to get their hands on hardware capable of fulfilling their AI needs, and with consumer GPUs onboard, the firm won't have an issue with supply at all, if the TinyBox becomes a success. Not to mention that with AI accelerators, individuals often have to overpay from the base cost when the demand is high, so in this way, the TinyBox systems do make sense.
