可编程数据中心——SF Compute 的 Evan Conrad

这是在 AIE NYC 新设的 Compute Trading 专题活动期间录制的。下次 AIE CODE 见——这是我们为全球顶尖智能体工程师举办的最后一场旗舰活动。This was recorded on the sidelines of the new Compute Trading track at AIE NYC. Catch us next at AIE CODE, our last flagship for the top agentic engineers in the world.

在云计算兴起初期，曾做客节目的 Martin Casado 开创了一项极具颠覆性的技术，让 Cisco 感受到了巨大威胁，甚至愿意为此支付 6 亿美元；而 VMware 最终以 13 亿美元的报价胜出：In the early days of cloud, former guest Martin Casado made something so disruptive that Cisco was threatened enough to pay $600m for it, and VMware outbid for $1.3B:

Charlie Wiser@wisercharlie

An M&A lesson: Cisco offered $600m for Nicira. @bhorowitz told @martin_casado: “The high offer is a signal that something in the environment has changed. A high offer from an acquirer means you should not take it!” “Don’t just sell to Cisco. Run a process.” Martin stopped …

3:42 PM · Sep 20, 2026 · 37.1K Views

4 Replies · 1 Repost · 29 Likes

这一理念就是软件定义网络：通过将控制平面与数据平面分离，实现路由网络的虚拟化。如今，这场变革正席卷 GPU 领域。过去，要运行自己的超算集群，前期需要投入 5000 万至 1 亿美元，落实相关承诺，并自行构建从硬件、固件到内核的整套技术栈；而现在，SF Compute 不仅让你能够买卖当前及未来的 GPU 小时，还能通过编程控制从网络到内存的一切。That concept was software-defined networking, which virtualized the routing network by separating the control plane from the data plane. That revolution is now coming for GPUs - where previously running your own supercompute cluster required $50-100m upfront to get commitments and do the entire stack from hardware to firmware to kernels, SF Compute is now enabling you to not only buy or sell GPU hours now and in the future, but also to programmatically control everything from your network to memory.

我们上次和 Evan 谈的是计算资源商品化。在 AI Engineer New York 上，我们进一步深入探讨了：要实际交付一份 GPU 合约，需要具备什么条件？计算资源市场要实现流动性，又必须满足哪些前提？We last spoke with Evan about commoditizing compute. At AI Engineer New York, we went deeper: what does it take to physically deliver a GPU contract, and what has to be true before a market in compute can become liquid?

从销售客房到经营整家酒店From selling a room to running the hotel

Evan用酒店作比喻，描述了SF Compute的扩张历程。客户想要一间客房，随后又要求客房清洁、客房服务和安保。最终你会发现，提供客房意味着要运营整家酒店。SF Compute起初只是想转租一个集群；此后，公司逐步搭建起云服务所需的大部分运营能力，以交付其市场上交易的算力。Evan describes SF Compute’s expansion with a hotel analogy. A customer wants a room, then asks for cleaning, room service, and security. Eventually you discover that delivering the room means operating the hotel. SF Compute began by trying to sublease a cluster; the company has since built much of the operating capacity of a cloud to deliver the compute traded on its market.

这项工作属于实物结算：买方获得的是可实际使用的算力，而不是仅仅按某个指数进行现金结算。它将集群的物理约束直接带入市场。工作负载能否中断？从存储中恢复需要多快？需要哪一代 GPU、怎样的网络和软件配置？这些细节都会影响合约和价格。That work is physical settlement: the buyer gets usable compute, rather than simply a cash payment against an index. It brings the physical constraints of a cluster into the market itself. Can a workload be interrupted? How quickly can it recover from storage? Which GPU generation, networking and software configuration does it need? Those details affect both the contract and the price.

让算力可交易Making compute tradeable

SF Compute 并没有等到所有 GPU 集群都变得可以互换，而是根据不同的限制条件匹配订单。Evan 认为，这让交易能够在技术不断变化的同时进行，代价是流动性分散到了更多不同的产品上。我们还讨论了现货与远期定价、批量推理与实时推理，以及指数为何可能与实际购买算力的成本脱节。Rather than waiting for every GPU cluster to become interchangeable, SF Compute matches orders with different constraints. Evan argues that this makes trading possible while the technology changes, at the cost of spreading liquidity across more variants. We also discuss spot and forward pricing, batch versus live inference, and why an index can become disconnected from the cost of actually buying compute.

独立性是 Evan 支持由市场运营方运营的核心理由。他认为，拥有庞大硬件业务或推理业务的公司，其自身利益会让它们更难运营一个中立的交易平台。我们还谈到了那些不那么光鲜的工程工作：实地考察、设计集群、运行背板，以及让基础设施变得可编程。临近结尾时，他以能够动态划分 InfiniBand 网络为例，说明了其中一种能力。Independence is central to Evan’s case for a market operator. He argues that companies with large hardware or inference businesses have incentives that make it harder to run a neutral exchange. We also get into the unglamorous engineering: visiting sites, designing clusters, running the backplane, and making infrastructure programmable. Near the end, he describes the ability to subdivide InfiniBand fabric on the fly as one example.

Guest: Evan Conrad, CEO of SF Compute.

节目备注Show notes

• Evan 在 AI Engineer NYC 上的演讲：算力市场如何运作

  Evan’s AI Engineer NYC talk: How Compute Markets Work

• 我们之前关于 SF Compute 的对话

  Our previous SF Compute conversation

• 2020年油价期货为何跌至负值——美国能源信息署（EIA）

  Why oil futures went negative in 2020 — EIA

• SF Compute 客户如何转售闲置 GPU 算力

  How SF Compute customers resell unused GPU capacity

• SF Compute 的 2.45 亿美元算力销售交易

  SF Compute’s $245M compute sale

• Abel: SF Compute’s settlement ledger

• 美国商品期货交易委员会：巴克莱与LIBOR操纵事件

  CFTC: Barclays and LIBOR manipulation

• 弹性 InfiniBand 分区

  Elastic InfiniBand partitions

时间戳Timestamps

• 0:00 — 为什么 NVIDIA 造不出这个？

  0:00 — Why can’t NVIDIA build this?

• 0:25 — Welcome back to Latent Space

• 2:23 — 从销售客房到经营酒店

  2:23 — From selling a room to running the hotel

• 3:47 — 实物结算：实际交付算力

  3:47 — Physical settlement: actually delivering compute

• 6:00 — 流动性与 GPU 订单簿

  6:00 — Liquidity and the GPU order book

• 8:42 — 非标准算力交易

  8:42 — Trading nonstandard compute

• 10:00 — 中断并迁移工作负载

  10:00 — Interrupting and moving workloads

• 12:20 — 为什么硬件群组很重要

  12:20 — Why hardware cohorts matter

• 14:32——算力合同最远能签多长时间？

  14:32 — How far out do compute contracts go?

• 16:19 — 批量推理与实时推理租约

  16:19 — Batch versus live inference leases

• 17:58 — 算力价格的形态

  17:58 — The shape of compute prices

• 20:33 — GPU 世代、规格与 SKU

  20:33 — GPU generations, specifications and SKUs

• 23:30 — 实物交割与现金结算

  23:30 — Physical versus cash settlement

• 27:00 — 新兴的算力市场生态系统

  27:00 — The emerging compute market ecosystem

• 29:03 — 交付 GPU 集群需要具备什么条件

  29:03 — What it takes to deliver a GPU cluster

• 32:24 — 主权计算

  32:24 — Sovereign compute

• 33:26 — 为什么 NVIDIA 无法打造这个市场

  33:26 — Why NVIDIA can’t build this market

• 34:48 — 一个可编程的数据中心

  34:48 — A programmable data center

文字记录Transcript

自动生成的转录文本，经过简单排版；发言者标签尚未核实。Automated transcript, lightly formatted; speaker labels have not been verified.

00:00 NVIDIA 显然是房间里的 800 磅大猩猩。为什么他们没有打造 SF Compute？我们的看法是，NVIDIA 无法打造它，但它的存在却能让 NVIDIA 获益匪浅。他们之所以无法打造它，是因为那样一来，他们就不够独立，无法让人们在其上进行交易。00:00 NVIDIA is obviously like the 800-pound gorilla in the room. Why didn’t they make SF Compute? So our impression is that NVIDIA can’t make it, but benefits tremendously from it existing. The reason why they can’t make it is because they would then not be independent enough for people to trade on it.

00:25 总之，Evan，欢迎回到 Latent Space。谢谢，也欢迎回到 AIE。其实，这是我第一次来 AIE。我想是的，没错。这次特别有意义，因为我觉得你研究算力交易和算力市场已经有一段时间了，而现在正好赶上这个风口。是啊。Jump 基本上宣布要进军算力市场了，所以我很高兴能把大家聚在一起。你见过 SemiAnalysis 的 Oliver 了吧？据我了解，他基本上是在开始关注并报道算力市场。所以大家都会关注你的演讲。00:25 Anyway, Evan, welcome back to Latent Space. Thank you so Welcome back to AIE. Actually, first time at AIE. I think so, yeah. This is a very special one because I feel like you have been working on compute trading, compute markets for a while. Now it’s like feeling of the moment. Yeah. Jump basically announced that they are getting into compute markets, which is why I’m excited to sort of cluster people. You met Oliver from SemiAnalysis, who is basically initiating coverage on compute markets is my read on this. So people are going to watch your talk.

01:00 我觉得这非常好地解释了你们的起源故事、你们为什么有存在的必要，以及你们正在解决的那些棘手问题。对。表达得非常简单，也很吸引人。我特别羡慕你的写作能力，因为你展示了在 New Reps 上用的那张传单。对。我当时就想，这写得真直接、简洁，而且很好。对。总之，恭喜。谢谢。我很感激。也恭喜你们办 AIE。看起来你们进展很顺利。我们确实进展很顺利。我刚从明年 AIE 场地的考察回来。那……能透露一点吗？在贾维茨中心。就是办动漫展的那个地方。好。哇。01:00 I think it’s a very good explanation of both your origin story and why you need to exist and all the hard problems you work on. Yeah. Done in a very simple, engaging manner. I’m very jealous of your writing skills because you showed the flyer that you showed at New Reps. Yeah. I was like, it’s pretty straightforward and simple and it’s good. Yeah. So anyway, congrats. Thank you. I appreciate that. And also congrats on AIE. It seems to, y’all are rolling. We’re rolling. I just came back from the site tour for next year’s AIE. then for You have like a hint? At Javits Center. It’s the same place they do Comic Con. Okay. Wow.

01:35 哇。哇。真是厉害。不过我觉得，聚焦金融确实很受大家欢迎。是啊。所以我们打算试着把内容拆分开来。比如现在，我们把所有东西都归到金融这一类里。像你的金融、他们的金融，保险也算金融，但它们之间其实差别很大。是啊。所以以后我们可能会把内容分得更细一些，因为大家想深入了解对冲基金、银行业或者个人财富管理。是啊。尤其是在纽约。是啊。Anthropic 当时说：“对，我们现在全力关注 RIA。”RIA，也就是注册投资顾问。对。跟你们完全不一样。01:35 Wow. Wow. Damn. But I think the finance focus is really hitting for folks. Yeah. So we’re going to try to split out. Like this is, here we just lump everything in finance. Like your finance, their finance, like insurance is finance, but like they’re all super different. Yeah. So we’ll probably break out things more minutely in future because people want to go deep on hedge fund stuff or banking or personal wealth. Yeah. Especially in New York. Yeah. Anthropic was like, yeah, we’re all about RIAs right now. Yeah. RIAs like registered investment advisors. Yes. Like so different from you.

02:10 不，不，不。我知道这件事。对，对。好吧。对于不了解情况的听众来说，两年前我们做过一期播客，你当时聊了聊你们的情况，你知道，那时 SF Compute 发展到哪一步了。嗯，如今你们已经更多地转向某种实体交付了。你们在说你们的……背板，还是该怎么称呼？呃，背板。背板。对。显然，这需要大量硬核工程工作。是的。嗯，你能不能更新一下现状，比如和两年前在播客里听过你的听众相比，SF Compute 现在发展到哪一步了？我们刚开始的时候，公司叫 Junark，当时我们只是在想办法转租我们的集群。02:10 No, no, no. I’m aware of this. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So for listeners who don’t know, we did a podcast two years ago where you talked about your, you know, where SF Compute was. Um, today you’re, you’re much more in a sort of physical settlement. You’re talking, you’re talking about your, your back fabric or what do call it? Uh, the backplane. Backplane. Yeah. Which obviously that takes a lot of hardcore engineering stuff. Yeah. Um, can you give a status update on like, where is SF Compute versus listeners who last heard you on a podcast two years ago? So, uh, when we started, we were this company called Junark and then we were just trying to sublease our cluster.

02:45 嗯，我们从技术栈入手。嗯，可以这样理解：这就像你在一家酒店里，想要卖出那间酒店客房。然后有人问你：“嘿，你会帮我打扫房间吗？”嗯，你就说：“哦，我想我可能也需要那间酒店客房。或者说，我需要那个，嗯，清洁用品间。”于是你就去拿到了清洁用品间的使用权限。接着他们又想要客房服务，于是你就拿到了厨房的使用权限。然后呢，他们又想要，嗯，安保服务。于是你就拿到了安保室的使用权限。你就这样拿到这个的权限，做那个，再做这个。到了某个时候，你就已经在经营整家酒店了。嗯，而当你开始经营整家酒店时，你会说：“哦，等一下。”02:45 Um, and we started there in the technical stack. Um, and a way to think about it is it’s like you’re in a hotel and you’re trying to sell that hotel room. And then somebody asks you, Hey, like, are you going to clean my room? Um, and then you say, Oh, I guess I probably also need the hotel room as well. Or like I need the, um, the cleaning closet. And so you go get access to the cleaning closet and then they want room service. And so you get access to the kitchen and then, you know, they want, um, security. And so you get access to the security closet and you get this and you do that and you do this. And at a certain point you’re just running the whole hotel. Um, and the moment you’re running the whole hotel, you say, Oh, wait a second.

03:21 嗯，相反，在这个市场上，我的供应商更像是一家基金，嗯，或者是一家能够接入——就我们的情况而言，是一家能够接入数据中心的云服务商。我们还会进一步提升。因此，过去几年我们一直在做的，就是构建云服务所需的全部运营能力，嗯，以便提供、真正交付可靠的算力。嗯，我们称之为实物交割。我们借用了期货市场、其他市场中的一个术语，嗯，在这些市场中，你知道，03:21 Um, instead my supplier on this market, um, is somebody that looks closer to a, fund, um, or a cloud that has access in our case, a cloud that has access to the data center. And we’re going to level up. And so what we’ve spent the last several years doing is building the entire operating capacity of a cloud, um, in order to offer, in order to actually deliver, uh, the compute at a reliable level. Um, we call that physical settlement. We’re taking a term from the futures market, from futures markets, from other markets, um, where in, you know,

03:57 石油或大豆之类的实物交割，意味着你会收到交付给你的石油和大豆。是的。嗯，不过在某些市场，比如石油和电力市场，嗯，石油有一套交付网络。你得有管道。如果你希望石油交付给你，就必须有办法把它运到你那里。是的。嗯，说到金融，对金融史感兴趣的人可能还记得，疫情期间石油价格跌成了负数，因为，呃，我会付钱请你把石油从我这里运走，因为它就堆在港口里。呃，而且，我没法为这些付钱。03:57 oil or soybeans or something, physical settlement means you get delivered the oil and the soybeans. Yes. Um, but, um, in some markets, um, like in oil and also in power, um, there’s like a delivery network in oil. You have to have pipelines. If you would like the oil to be delivered to you, there has to be a way for it to get to you. Yes. Um, and finance, and for people interested in financial history during COVID oil went negative because, uh, so like I will pay you to take oil from me because it is sitting there in the port. Uh, and like, I can’t pay for this.

04:32 是的。所以我会付钱让你接收我的石油。是的，这就是实物交割的奇怪之处。是的，其他市场里也有很多类似的怪现象。比如在电力市场和电网中，你填写的订单里有些部分——买单和卖方相关的内容——之所以存在，是因为锅炉需要一段时间才能冷却下来。嗯，你知道，你可以关掉锅炉，然后在一段时间内重新启动它。所以这些因素必须纳入订单簿的考量。这一类情况在算力市场中也会出现。所以，我们在设计实物交割和订单簿时进行了共同设计……04:32 Yes. And so I will pay you to take my oil. Yes. That is like the weirdness of physical settlement. Yes. There’s a bunch of weirdnesses like this in other markets as well. So in the power markets and the grid, um, there’s parts of the orders that you fill out, the buy orders and sellers that, um, are there because the boiler takes a while to cool off. Um, and you can, you know, stop the boiler and then it will, you can start it back up again within some period of time. And so that has to get factored into the order book. Um, this genre thing is the same thing that happens in compute markets. So we co-designed physical settlement and the order book at the

05:10 同一时间。而这意味着我们可以真正处理计算资源方面的实际限制，其中可能包括这样的情况：哦，我不介意被打断，但前提是这个东西上有存储空间，而且我能非常快速地从中恢复。嗯，问题类型非常相似。是的。所以，呃，大家可以参考你的演讲，而且你之前也上过几档播客。嗯，所以我想聊点大概相当于 201 级的内容，而不是 101 级的入门内容。当然。呃，而且我自己也做过衍生品交易，所以我可以给大家讲得更深入一些，涉及一些你通常不会展开的细节。嗯，比如说，计算资源的市场到底有多成熟、多有深度，或者流动性有多高……05:10 same time. And that meant that we get to actually handle the real constraints of compute, which might include something like, oh, I’m okay with being interrupted, but only if there’s like storage on the thing that I can recover from really quickly. Um, very similar types of problems. Yeah. So, uh, people can refer to your talk and you’ve done a couple other podcasts already. Um, so I want to be like the sort of 201 level instead of the 101 level. Sure. Uh, and also because I, I am, I have been a derivative trader, so I can give people a bit more detail that you normally don’t get into. Um, so for example, well, how, how mature or deep or liquid is the compute

05:45 今天的市场？嗯，还不太成熟，也没有足够的深度或流动性。好吧，我们一直在做的是，首先得先让大量供给上线，这本身就需要一段时间。然后，我们得搭建整个平台来实现这一点。嗯，我们刚刚才让它运转起来。所以现在我们把容量转移到订单簿上，这样就有了流动性。我们总容量的 5% 已经放在订单簿上，而且我们一直在不断增加。与此同时，我们也在引入更多容量，这些都会放到订单簿上。嗯，好的一点是，嗯，也许我应该说，订单簿上的实际交易量很小，但是，05:45 market today? Uh, not very mature or deep or liquid. Okay. so what we’ve been doing is first we had to, we had to go get a bunch of supply online in the first place, which just takes a while. And then we had to build the entire platform in order to do this. Um, and we just now got that working. And so now we move, um, capacity over onto the order book, um, which makes it liquid. Um, and so 5% of our total capacity is on the order book and we’re consistently moving more and more. And then we’re bringing on more capacity. That’s all on the order book. Um, the nice part is that, um, maybe I should have said the, the volume on the actual order book is small, but the,

06:21 嗯，订单簿上的流动性很高。所以，对于你拥有的那一小部分容量来说，嗯，流动性非常集中。嗯，我想，对使用这项服务的人来说，一个比较标准的指标是：客户从我们这里购买容量，花 100 美元买下这些容量后，我们平均能通过转售给其他人赚回 25 美元。嗯，这就是我们会追踪的数字之一，因为我们希望流动性对商业参与者有用，而衡量流动性的方式有很多。你可以说，比如，我就是想要大量的做市商之类的。06:21 um, the liquidity on the order book is high. So for that small amount of capacity that you have, um, you have, um, like very concentrated liquidity. So, um, a sort of standard metric, I would say for someone who is using this is a customer who buys capacity from us and they spend a hundred dollars to buy that capacity. We’ll make back $25 on average from selling it back to somebody else. Um, and that’s the number that we, or this is one of the metrics that we try to track because, we want the liquidity to be useful to the commercial participant and you can measure liquidity in a bunch of different ways. You can say like, I just want tons of makers or something.

06:56 嗯，你也可以用一些比较宏大的方式来衡量。我们试着从这个角度衡量：这是否解决了客户的问题？嗯。明白了。上次我们聊的时候，也谈了很多关于合约的事，关于合约标准化。是的。比如和 CFTC 之类的机构沟通，那些事情现在进展如何？嗯，我觉得总的来说，合约标准化离我们还很远。嗯，当时我们试图做的是，或者说，过去几年我们基本上认识到，我们只是需要……06:56 Um, and you can measure it in like high-minded ways. We try to measure it by like, is this solving the problem, um, for the customer? Yeah. Got it. And so, uh, last time we talked as well, there was a lot of contract, uh, conversation about standardizing the contracts. Yes. talking with like, uh, the CFTC or whatever, what’s the status of those things? Um, so I think standardizing the contracts in general is still pretty far away. Um, and the, what we were trying to do at the time was, um, or basically what we learned over the last several years was we just needed to

07:31 运营整个东西。否则就无法把它标准化。要想更接近能够标准化的状态，首先得让这个东西的所有操作都保持一致。对。举个可能存在差异的例子：单个运营商可以提供两种不同类型的虚拟机。其中一种虚拟机的性能可能比另一种低 40%。而 40% 可不是个小数目。你说的性能下降，是指 MFU 这类指标，还是指你经历过的预热量之类的？这会有影响。所以在这个具体案例中，我说的是 GPU 内核启动，以及启动需要多长时间。07:31 operate the whole thing. Otherwise you cannot standardize the thing. And so to get closer to something that can be standardized, you first need to make all the operations of the thing the same. Right. To give an example of what can be different is a single operator can offer two different types of virtual machines. One type of virtual machine, um, might have a 40% performance, um, degradation versus another types of virtual machine. And 40% is a lot. When you say performance degradation, are you talking like MFU type things or like amount of burn in that you’ve experienced or what? It will affect. So in this particular case, I’m talking about GPU kernel launches and how long it takes for that to happen.

08:07 嗯，这个过程在进行某种训练或推理时相当常见。嗯，那个，呃，基本上，最终结果就是 MFU 会变差，不过，嗯，这就像是中间级别。基本上就是中间级别。对，对。所以，我想说的是，对于以前交易过大宗商品的人来说，大宗商品有不同的等级。是的，对吧？比如说，不是泛泛地说石油，而是轻质低硫原油，或者与轻质低硫原油相反的那种原油；又或者，呃，A 级玉米、B 级玉米之类的。呃，所以人们想要……嗯，你得先确定这些东西各自对应的等级。没错。是的。我想知道这些等级是否已经确定了。08:07 Um, which is a process that happens quite frequently when you’re doing sort of either training or inference. Um, the, um, uh, that will basically, the end result is that you get a worse MFU, but, um, like is the intermediate level. the intermediate level basically. Yeah. Yeah. So, so what I’m trying to, so for anyone who’s traded commodities before, there’s different grades of commodity. Yes. Right. There’s like, it’s not oil. It’s light sweet crude versus like whatever the opposite of light sweet crude is, or it’s like, you know, uh, corn level a or corn B or whatever. Uh, and so like people are trying to, well, you have to establish the equivalents of those things. Correct. Yes. I’m wondering if they have been established.

08:42 所以我们采取的做法是，嗯，创建了一个带有多种不同约束条件的订单簿。你可以说，我想要某种介于这个和那个之间的东西。嗯，它的有效时间是从这个时刻到那个时刻。嗯，就像是从 X 到 Y，有一大堆不同的属性可以附加到你的订单上。然后，我们会在一个大型撮合引擎中，将它与具有这些属性的卖单进行匹配。嗯，我们之所以这样做，是因为这样一来，我们就能在还不必预先明确技术能做到什么的情况下创造流动性。嗯，而且由于技术变化得非常快，嗯，我们基本上希望能够做到这一点。这样做的代价是，流动性的集中度会比较低。08:42 So what we did instead, um, was we created an order book that had multiple different constraints and you can say, I want to have, um, you know, something that’s between this and that. Um, it runs from this time to this time. Um, it’s like, uh, X to Y, it’s a bunch of different properties that you can attach to your order. And then we match that against sell orders that have those properties, um, in a big matching engine. Um, and the reason why we did it this way is it allows us to generate liquidity without having to standardize before, know, what the technology can do. Um, and because the technology was shifting so quickly, um, we wanted to basically be able to do that. The trade off of this is that you have less concentrated liquidity.

09:18 所以价格会出现更大的买卖价差。是的。嗯，这很糟。是的。不过另一方面，这意味着有很多套利机会可以赚——如果你能正确操作的话。所以，如果你的产品能使用许多不同类型的容量，那么你可能会很喜欢 SF compute，因为你就能使用许多不同类型的容量，从而赚更多钱。嗯，你可以赚取价差。好。那么，在这个由各种事物组成的网格中，哪些维度很重要？嗯，有很多不同的因素。嗯，其中一个我会说是维度类别，比如有没有一个……09:18 And so the prices are going to have, there’s going to be more spreads between the, the buy and the sell. Yeah. Um, it sucks. Yeah. But on the other hand, it means there’s lots of arbitrage to make, um, if you can do that correctly. So if you have a product that can use lots of different types of capacity, um, then you might really like SF compute because you will be able to use lots of different types of capacity and you’ll make more money. Um, you can take the spread. Okay. What dimensions matter in this grid of things? Um, so a bunch of different things. Um, one is dimensions categories that I will say is like, is there a

09:53 现在有工作负载在上面运行吗，还是说这是未来的容量？当然。是现在的容量吗？嗯，要出售当前的容量，你就得中断当前的工作负载。所以你得考虑一下：我介不介意当前的工作负载被中断？如果出售的是一个月后才开始使用的容量，那你随时都可以买卖它。因此，要获得这类容量的流动性非常容易。嗯，有些人会担心，比如说，糟了，我下个月有容量可用；但这和现在就中断工作负载是很不一样的。嗯，中断的方式也很重要。举个例子，如果你用的是一个集群，而这个集群的存储没有达到你希望的水平。嗯，比如说，你底层用的是 Weco 还是 Vast 系统？09:53 workload running on it right now or is it capacity in the future? Sure. is it capacity right now? Um, capacity right now in order for you to sell that, um, you have to interrupt your current workload. So you have to think, do I care if my current workload is interrupted or not? Capacity that’s sold that’s starting a month from now, um, you can buy and sell that all the time. And so you get, um, liquidity on that really easily. Um, there is some concern like, oh no, well I have capacity next month, but it’s very different than if you’re interrupting a workload right now. Um, the way that the interruption happens matters. So an example is if you’re on a cluster and the cluster doesn’t have as amazing storage as you want it to have. Um, so an example is like, do you have a Weco or Vast system under the hood?

10:31 嗯，你们提供这个吗？它的规模有多大？嗯，这会影响你应对被抢占或从集群中移除的方式。同时，存储的位置也很重要。所以，嗯，如果你能够快速地将这些数据从一个集群迁移到另一个集群，那么也许就能将它们分散到多个不同的集群中。嗯，你可以在这里被中断，然后在那边重新启动。嗯，要实现这一点，你还需要一条连接两个集群的快速传输通道。通常这通过 WAN 来实现，但这些集群大多并不……10:31 Um, and do you offer that? And like, what’s the size of that? Um, this changes how you respond to, um, being preempted or removed off the cluster. meanwhile, the location of that storage matters. So, um, if you’re able to move that data from one cluster to another, um, quickly, then maybe you might be able to spread across multiple different clusters. Um, and you can be interrupted over here and then pop back up over there. Um, to make that work, you also need, like a, a fast transit path between one cluster and another. Typically this is implemented with a WAN, but most of these clusters don’t

11:06 必然会有，嗯，比如说一个广域网。没错，广域网。基本上就是把各个集群连接起来的线缆。也可以把它理解成一个私有互联网。呃，如今部署的很多集群，它们不像传统的 CPU 集群那样，出于延迟方面的考虑，会部署在客户附近。对于 GPU 集群来说，它们会部署在电力供应充足的地方，嗯，也就是说，你知道，数据中心会建在电力供应充足的地方，而不是客户附近。这意味着，很多设施正被建在一些以前没人想到会建数据中心的地方。11:06 necessarily have, um, like a wide area network. Yeah. A wide area network. So, basically cables that connect the clusters together. A private internet is another way to think about it. uh, a lot of clusters that are being spun up today are like, they’re not attached to, um, traditional CPU clusters were, next to the customer for latency reasons. In GPUs, they’re next to the power, um, wherever the, like, you know, you put the data center next to the power rather than next to the customer. Um, this means that a lot of stuff is getting put in places that previously they weren’t expecting data centers there.

11:41 所以，你从一个到另一个的传输路径可能没那么……嗯，理想。这就开始变得重要了。嗯，其他例子还有一些奇怪的情况：理论上我们支持，但实际上并不支持。呃，比如说，这是我们正在考虑的事情，但基本上还没做。嗯，早期的 GB 200 出过问题，早期的 H 100 也出过问题。嗯，所以如果你要买 H 100 或 GB 200，可能真的会想买某个时间点之后部署的那些，因为这样你拿到的就不是机架上最早那批糟糕货了。11:41 And so you may not have, um, as, um, excellent of a transit path, um, from one to the other. So this, this starts to matter. Um, other examples are, um, weird shit where we theoretically support, but don’t actually, um, uh, like this is a thing that we’re thinking about, but haven’t done basically. Um, the early GB 200s broke. The early H 100s broke. Um, and so if you were buying H 100s or you’re buying GB 200s, you might really want the ones that were deployed after a certain time because you’re not getting the first shitty ones off the rack.

12:16 所以，如果你是一个特别懂行的客户，可能愿意多付一些，嗯，因为这个。哦，所以这跟它们属于哪个批次有关：它们生产出来后，随着时间推移会变得更好。比如说，最早下线的那些可能有些瑕疵或问题。对。所以如果你拿到的是最早的那批，嗯，或者说来自第一批发货的产品，嗯，那它们可能确实会坏掉，或者出现某种问题。我猜整个流程大概是这样：你看，到处都有瑕疵，这种事就是会发生。对，完全如此。所以你会收到 TSMC 之类的新一批货，然后你就做测试，弄清楚……12:16 And so if you’re a super sophisticated customer, you may be willing to pay more, um, because for that. Oh, so it’s, it’s about like what cohort they were, they were produced and they get better over time. So like, uh, the first ones off the rack maybe had some faults or some problem. Right. And so if you were the ones who got the first ones, um, or, you first ones from, um, the, the first shipment of them, um, then yeah, they would, they would be broken or, um, in some way. I assume the sort of process is like, look, there’s defects everywhere. Like it’s, it just happens. Right. Totally. And so like you get it, you get a new shipment offer from TSMC or whatever, and you just kind of run your tests and like you, you figure out

12:53 哪些？哪些是不好的，你就把它们淘汰掉。这不就是事情的运作方式吗？而且，我之前不知道还有这种按批次分组的做法，比如说，2026 年第四季度的 B300，可能比 2027 年的 B300 差得多。嗯，我举个例子。嗯，你说的是老化测试。对。所以当你拿到一个集群时，嗯，一家好的云服务商会做的，就是尽量在 GPU 到客户手里之前，把有问题的都筛出来。然后，嗯，坏掉的 GPU 或节点会走 RMA 流程。基本上你去申请就行。对。你把它退回去，然后换一台新的，不过这需要一段交付周期，但是……12:53 which ones, which ones are bad and you throw them out. And isn’t that how it works? And I, I didn’t know about this element of cohorting where like, let’s say Q4, 2026, uh, B300s are way worse than 2027 B300s. Yeah. So, um, I’ll give an example. Um, you’re describing burn-in. Yes. so when you get a cluster, um, a good cloud, what it does. Is it tries to kill all the GPUs, um, before they ever get in the hands of the customer. Um, and then, um, the GPUs that are broken or the nodes that are broken, um, you get RMA’d. You basically go and request it. Yeah. You return it and you get a new one and there’s a lead time to that, but

13:30，反正你会拿到，你会拿回一些东西。嗯，然后客户就永远不必经历这些。嗯，我指的是，嗯，比如早期的 H100 上有一些固件漏洞，这些问题甚至可能和具体的产品无关，也就是说，它们可能不是 NVIDIA 的问题。可能是超微在你买的设备里有一个固件漏洞。嗯，而且这个问题适用于所有设备，所以都一样。比如说，解决办法是你得让他们更新固件。嗯，或者他们得在每个新箱子里都装上一个新的东西。13:30 whatever, you’ll get, you’ll get some back. Um, and then the customer never has to experience this. Um, the, um, thing I’m referring to is that, um, like in early H100s, there were like firmware bugs that may not even be related to the specific, like they may not be NVIDIA. They might be like Super Micro has a firmware bug in the, um, in the box that you bought. Um, and it applies to all of them and it doesn’t matter. Like, um, the solution to that was you need to get them to update their firmware. Um, or they need to ship a new thing, um, in every new box.

14:07 是的。我们拿到的那些 B300 就遇到过这种情况。嗯，IQ 得找 Devin 来修好它。没错，很好。所以这类问题可能有各种不同的情况发生。有意思。好吧，我在想，跟整体情况相比，这看起来只是个小问题。我只是想让大家了解这个市场的格局。嗯，你提到了抢占，你知道，我们也聊过竞价实例，以及这方面的类比。对。然后还有提前一个月预订。这样的市场能提前多久？对你来说，实时市场或者说抢占机制是不是比……更有意思？14:07 Yeah. had this for like the, the B300s that, that we got. Um, and the IQ had to use Devin to go fix it. Yes. Great. So like different types of problems like this can happen. Interesting. Okay. So I’m like, okay, look, that seems small compared to the overall. Like, I just want to, like, I want people to understand that the shape of this market, um, you mentioned like preemption, you know, and, you we talked about spot instances and how, how that, uh, the analogy is. Yeah. And then there’s also, you know, booking a month out. How far out do this, do these markets go? And is, is real time or sort of preemption more interesting to you versus,

14:42 更远、更往后？嗯，回答你的第一个问题，是三到五年。嗯，哇。我们开始看到……是按月、按季度，还是怎样？你是在问现金流是怎么运作的吗？比如合同，像期货合约，对吧？再说一次，我以前是做合约的，呃，衍生品交易员。在市场本身，嗯，也就是更广泛的市场里。对。集群的融资期限是三到五年。好。嗯，所以付款会在这段时间内全部完成。对。我们的订单簿里还有一些容量区块，嗯，期限可以延伸到任意时间。对，这方面的现金流，我们还得做一些事情。14:42 far being further, further out? Um, to answer your first question, three to five years. Um, wow. We’re starting to see. month by month or quarter by quarter or how’s this? Are you asking how the cashflow works? Like the, the contracts, like the, the futures contracts, right? Like again, like I’m a former contracts, uh, derivatives trader. In the, in the market itself, um, like is in the broader market. Yeah. clusters are financed three to five years. Okay. Um, so the, the, the payments are totally over that period of time. Yeah. there is also like blocks of capacity in our order book, um, which can extend any arbitrary time. Yeah. there’s some stuff that we have to do, um, for, um, the cashflow on that

现在是 15:18。我们现在的做法就是让大家一次性预付一个区块的费用。嗯，对于期限更长的合同租约，我们不会要求他们这么做。这就涉及一些我肯定得拿白板来解释的东西。嗯，不过你刚才还有个问题，我正要回答来着。我忘了。你想听实时的，还是说，你想听更多……嗯，你更感兴趣的是哪种？实时的，还是期限更长的？所以我们更关注期限更长的，因为我们想建立一条流动性很强的远期曲线。嗯，这些东西有点相同，又有点不同。嗯，我们的做法是，因为……15:18 right now. What we do is we just ask people to pay entirely upfront for a block. Um, we don’t ask them to do that for a lease for a longer term contract. This gets into something that I definitely need a whiteboard to explain. Um, but, um, you had another question I was about to answer. I forgot. do you want real time or do you want, like, do you want more, uh, what’s more interesting to you? Real time or long, longer out? So we care more about longer outs because we’re trying to build a forwards curve that has a lot of liquidity on it. Um, the, um, these are kind of the same thing and kind of not. Um, so what we do is we, since

15:54 啊，你可以提前一小时购买，也可以从现在开始买到下一小时，或者从现在开始买到未来三年，时间范围介于两者之间的任何时长都行。真不可思议。我知道。嗯，所以，嗯，你知道，或者说，如果我——技术上讲，嗯，这里会出现某种差异，而且每个客户的情况都不一样。基本上，比如说，如果我有一个工作负载，嗯，呃，基本上属于批量推理，可以在任何时候中断，我其实并不在乎。嗯，那么我能够……15:54 a, you can buy an hour out, you can buy right now to the next hour or you can buy right now to the next three years and anywhere in between. That’s wild. I know. Um, and so the, um, you know, or if I, you’re technically, um, the, there’s a certain difference that happens that’s dependent for each customer. Basically like if I have a workload that is, um, uh, that’s batch inference basically where I can be interrupted at any point. I don’t really care. Um, then my ability to be

16:29 被切断的话，大概就是，我需要提前一小时知道自己会被切断，这样我就没问题了。或者你甚至可以提前一两分钟通知我。不过，如果我有实时推理客户，他们希望我保持在线，那么你可以中断我，但要提前一个月、也许两个月，也许三个月通知我。然后我就能在这段时间内调整到相应的容量。不过你不能提前一分钟才通知我。所以这两种情况的定价不同。它们定价不同的原因是，价格是多少呢？16:29 cut off, um, is probably like, I need an hour of time to know, um, that I’m going to be cut off and then I’m good. Or I can even be notified in, you know, a minute or two. Um, but if I have, um, live inference customers who are expecting me to be online, um, then you can interrupt me, but in a month, maybe two months, maybe three months. Um, and then I can adapt to that capacity over that period of time. Um, but you cannot interrupt me in a minute. Um, and so those two things are priced differently. And the reason why they’re priced differently is because what is the price

17:05 你会愿意付多少钱来中断你的批处理作业？这和你愿意付多少钱来中断你的，嗯，实时作业很不一样。如果你有实时作业，中断服务时，你可能得向客户支付 SLA 赔偿。嗯，这样说得通吗？是的，我明白了。所以这实际上是解除租约的市场。这些就是解除租约的市场。我的天。然后还有未来租约的市场，或者说针对那些……嗯，我还以为这是转租的情况。这是解除租约。所以有一种理解方式是，嗯，在电力市场中，实际上有两个市场。嗯，一个是日前市场，还有……17:05 you would pay in order to interrupt your batch job? It’s very different than the price you would pay to interrupt your, um, live job. If you have a live job, you’re, you are probably paying an SLA when you break for your customer. Um, does that make sense? Yeah, I see. So this is actually the market for breaking leases. These are the market for breaking leases. Oh my God. And then there’s also the market for future leases or like for leases that are, um. Oh, I thought this was like a subletting situation. This is like a lease break. So one way to think about it, um, is in power markets, there’s actually two markets. Um, there’s like the day ahead market and

17:40，那里有实时市场。算力市场也有类似的情况，嗯，有即将上线的算力，嗯，或者即将交付给你的算力。嗯，还有当前正在使用的算力。这些算力的价格走势各不相同。好。有趣。是现货升水还是现货贴水？现货升水还是现货贴水？对。所以，呃，远期算力的价格是高于现货价还是低于现货价？嗯，远期算力的价格是……它会是这样吗？还是那样？比如，呃，你知道，按一年期、两年期来看？17:40 there’s the live market. Compute kind of has the same thing, um, where it has capacity that is coming online, um, or capacity that’s about to, um, arrive to you. Um, and then capacity that is currently in use. And these have different price dynamics. Okay. Interesting. backwardation or contango? Backwardation or contango? Yeah. so do, uh, is compute further out price higher than spot or lower than spot? Um, is compute further out price? Does it, does it go like this? Does it go like that over, uh, you know, over like one year, one year out, two year out?

18:16 做。哦，这是……呃，两者在不同时间。我觉得你不知道这件事挺有意思的。对。我的意思是，两者都有。要看你是谁。嗯，好吧。所以，呃，我来说明一下。等等，你是在问现在卖出的算力吗？也就是今天同样单位的算力。对。呃，也许不是今天，而是一个月后、一年后或两年后。那条曲线是上升还是下降？我们看到的像是一个驼峰。我的天。好吧，解释一下，呃，我觉得这在直觉上很好理解：基本上，如果我有牛奶，而且快过期了，我就会把它降价。对。呃，所以我们看到的基本就是这样。18:16 Do. Oh, this is an, uh, both at different times. I find it fascinating that you don’t know. Yeah. I mean, both. It depends on who you are. Um, okay. So, uh, I’ll make the case. Um, wait, so you’re asking is compute sold right now? same unit of compute today. Yes. Uh, maybe not today, maybe a month out versus one year out versus two year out. Is that, is that curve going up or going down? We see, like a hump. Oh my God. okay. So explain, um, like, I think this will make intuitive sense is basically like if I have milk and it is about to expire, I will lower the price on it. Yes. Um, and so that’s basically what we see.

18:52 这就像英伟达的发布周期，基本上是这样，对吧？呃，我们更想说的是，如果有一批算力即将到来，嗯，它没法在过去卖出去。所以它必须降价，才能以某个价格成交。对。所以一开始你会看到这种下跌，嗯，现在出售的东西，也就是目前市场上的任何东西，都是还没卖出去的东西。因此价格就会下跌。嗯，然后价格又会上涨，嗯，回到它想达到的水平。嗯，也许未来的算力价值会更低，嗯，因为人们不想等——人们更希望现在就能用上算力。所以他们其实是在为更短的交付周期付费。嗯，而对于要等到未来才能获得的算力，他们付的钱就会少一些。18:52 It’s like, it’s the Nvidia release cycle basically, right? Uh, well, we’re more saying like if there’s a block of compute and it’s approaching now, um, it can’t be sold in the past. And so it has to drop its price in order to clear at some price. Yeah. And so initially you see this like drop where, um, stuff that’s sold right now, anything that’s on the market right now, um, is something that hasn’t been sold. And so therefore the price will drop. Um, and then it goes up, um, to where it wants to be. Um, and then maybe compute in the future is worth less, um, because people don’t want, like people would like the compute now. And so they’re sort of paying for the shorter lead time. Um, and they pay less for the compute that’s off into the future.

19:28 我觉得这就是一条正常、健康的曲线。对。我觉得特别离谱、简直不敢相信的地方是，嗯，现在如果你拿一台 B300 来跑推理，嗯，把推理算力卖出去，大概每小时能赚 40 美元。基本上什么模型都行。嗯，这是按 100% 利用率算的；如果利用率只有 50% 左右，那可能每小时就赚 25 美元。对，每小时 25 美元。与此同时，你每小时只要花 5 到 6 美元就能买到 B300。这里面总有一个数字得变。对，这套利空间太大了，太大了。你在演讲中经常提到这一点。19:28 This is what I think a normal healthy curve looks like. Yeah. The place where I’m like, oh man, no shit. Um, is that, um, right now if you took a B300 and you trying to run inference on it, um, you can make $40 an hour or so, um, selling that as inference. Any model basically. Um, and so that’s if you use it at a hundred percent and maybe if you only have like 50% utilization or something, so like $25 an hour. Yeah. So $25 an hour. Meanwhile, you can buy B300s at like five to $6 an hour. One of these numbers has to change. Yeah. It’s a huge arbitrage. It’s huge arbitrage. this in your talks a lot.

20:04 是的。所以，嗯，很多人基本上都在看这个，并且觉得，嗯，如果我认为价格会上涨，那我将来可能愿意付出比之前预想更高的价格。嗯，因为我可能会想，好吧，我现在可以买五个，但如果之后买不到了，那如果它们要晚些时候才能上线，我可能愿意将来多买一些，把名额锁定下来。所以我们也看到了另一面。嗯，这多少取决于你是谁。好。那么，这样可以吗？而且，我只是……我真的很想把这点说得特别清楚。当然。你在乎芯片的不同代际吗？还是说你只在乎总 FLOPS 算力，然后把它分配到你想用的任何芯片上？20:04 Yeah. So, um, a bunch of people are basically looking at this and thinking, um, if I think prices are going to go up, I might be willing to pay more than what I previously thought in the future. Um, because I might think, okay, I can buy a five right now, but if I can’t buy anymore, then maybe I will be willing to buy even more in the future just to lock it in if it’s going to come online later. So we see the other side as well. Um, kind of depends on who you are. Cool. So, is it okay. And, and I just, I just really want to make super clear on this. Of course. Do you care about the different generations of chips and, or do you just care about overall flops and you spread it among whatever chips you want?

20:40 呃，我们关注不同代际的芯片，因为……你会在意。我想，比如说，我只是……我猜，你的客户会在意吗？会。对。哦，等等。你说不同代际的芯片，是指……比如说 B300，B300。没错。对。或者甚至是 AMD 之类的。对。呃，会。我觉得大家确实很在意芯片的代际。嗯，呃，我觉得部分原因是像显存（VRAM）这样的因素。嗯，部分原因是更大的 NBLink 域之类的。对。还有类似的因素。所以根本不可能把这些都抽象成某种通用的算力单位，让你可以随意混搭。我觉得就像你刚才提到石油一样，石油也不是一种单一的东西。实际上，石油有很多不同的类型。20:40 Uh, we care about different generations of chips because. you care. I think like, I only, I guess do your customers care? Yes. Right. Oh, wait. When you say a different generation chips, do you mean like. So like B300s, B300s. exactly. Yeah. Or like even AMD or whatever. Right. Uh, yes. I think people totally care about the generation of chips. Um, uh, I think part of this is because of things like VRAM. Um, and part of this is because of like, um, larger NBLink domains. Yeah. And things like that. So there’s just no way to abstract all this to like some generalized unit of compute that you can sort of mush around and whatever you like. I think like when you were saying oil, even oil isn’t oil. Oil is actually just like a bunch of different types of oil.

21:16 是啊。像航空燃油或汽车燃油之类的，随便什么。我觉得都一样。嗯，你会有一大堆不同的类型。确实如此，不过你有炼油厂。是啊，实际上可以有黑箱。你可以把石油放进去，然后得到各种产品。嗯，我想说的是，算力的异质性太强了。问题在于，你只能把底层的复杂性暴露给终端客户，这对你这个做市商来说可不是什么好事。也许吧。你想找出那个……瓶颈，或者我不知道，“瓶颈”更好的说法是什么，像是一个谢林点，大家都认同：“好吧，这算是个标准，我们都会接受这个标准。”然后，呃，它就会……21:16 Yeah. Like jet fuel or car fuel, whatever. I think it’s the same thing. Um, you’re going to get a bunch of different types. It is, but you have oil refineries. Yeah. can effectively have black boxes. You can put oil in and get like whatever out. Um, if compute, it is so heterogeneous, I guess is the word. It’s that you just have to expose the underlying complexity to your end customer, which is bad for you as a market maker. Maybe. Like you want to identify the one like choke point or like, I don’t know what the better word for choke point is like a shelling point where everyone agrees like, okay, like this is kind of the standard and we’ll, we’ll all agree to this standard and, uh, you know, it’ll

21:53 可能会有些低效。是的。呃，所以我们已经能够把这些问题减少到一定程度，但没错。就像你的工作就是降维。是的。我们减少了很多维度，但尽管如此，维度还是存在的。是啊，它仍然会存在。你知道你们有多少个 SKU 吗？所以，呃，比如说五乘以一百再乘以五千等于，我不知道。比如说，是什么呢？我们实际上把 SKU 做成了一种概念，呃，目的是让别人也能创建自己的 SKU。所以如果我想买 Blackwells，我可以说我愿意……21:53 be somewhat inefficient. Yes. Uh, so we’ve been able to reduce the, um, the, the problems to a certain level, but yeah. Like your job is like dimensionality reduction. Yes. We reduce a lot of the dimensions, but nonetheless, there are still dimensions. Yeah. It’s still going to exist. Do you, do you know how many SKUs you have? So, um, like five times a hundred times like 5,000 equals, I don’t know. Like what’s, we actually made SKUs like a concept, um, that, and the goal is to make it so that somebody else can make their own SKU. So if I want to buy Blackwells, I can say I’m willing to

22:31 以每小时 6 美元或更低的价格购买 Blackwell。你可以让我匹配 GB300，也可以匹配 B300；只要每小时低于 6 美元，具体是哪款 Blackwell 我都不在乎。但你刚才不是说你在意显存和其他东西吗？没错。但并非每个客户都在意。有些客户只要能在 Blackwell 上运行就行，什么型号都可以。有些客户则有非常具体的要求，他们需要完全符合要求的那种配置，因此愿意为此支付更高的价格，因为市场会向他们收取更高的费用。好吧。嗯，这就是我们做的事情。所以，人们会使用你的 API，以编程方式定义他们想要什么，然后你再把需求匹配给由不同卖家组成的资源组合，呃，这些卖家可能能够满足他们的需求。22:31 buy Blackwells at $6 an hour or less. And you can match me against GB300s or you can match me against B300s and I don’t care which Blackwell as long as it’s less than $6 an hour. but you just said you care about memory and other stuff. Totally. But not every customer does. So some customers like, um, just can work on Blackwells, whatever it is. Some customers are super hyper specific and they need this exact thing and they’re going to pay more for that because the market’s going to charge them more. Okay. Um, and that’s what we do. So, and so people use your APIs to programmatically define what they want and then you match that with whatever composition of sellers, uh, they might, they might, they might be able to fulfill.

23:08 是的。嗯，不过需要说明的是，使用命名查询是我们新推出的做法。嗯，但查询系统这个概念，就是目前订单簿的运作方式。好的。有意思。嗯，好吧。所以，呃，你知道，我觉得这其中有很多，嗯，细枝末节的东西。关于你们所打造的算力交易市场现状，有没有什么你们想让大家了解的？无论是金融人士还是工程师都可以。因为实际上是你们在定义这个市场。嗯，主要就是实物交割的必要性。是的。嗯，我们认为，如果你……我们花了三年时间才弄明白为什么你需要……23:08 Yes. Um, with a caveat that having a named query is a new thing we’re doing. Um, but the query system as a concept is how the order book works right now. Okay. Interesting. Um, all right. So, uh, you know, I, I think that’s like a lot of like, I guess, nitty gritty. Are there anything about like, I guess that you want to educate people on whether it’s financial people or engineers about the state of the compute trading market as, as you’ve developed it? Because effectively you guys are defining it. Um, mainly just the requirement for physical settlement. Yeah. Um, we think that if you, we, we spent three years learning why you need

23:44 实物结算。嗯，而且，嗯，我们今天整个谈话的核心是，嗯，这些东西并没有那么容易互换，而我们会努力让它们变得可互换。这是行业要做的事。嗯，但如果做不到这一点，你就会面临很多风险。嗯，如果你在行业有时间建立起、嗯、实物结算体系之前，就试图推动过度的金融化。嗯，我认为这样会形成一个很容易被操纵的市场，而且存在很大的基差风险，因为，嗯，你可能用来对冲的价格实际上根本没有……23:44 physical settlement. Um, and, um, our entire conversation today is, um, that it is, these things are not as fungible as you think we’re going to try and make them fungible. That’s the industry’s job to do that. Um, but without that, you run a lot of risks. Um, if you try to build, um, too much financialization before you’ve, the industry has had time to build out the, um, the physical settlement. Um, I think what you have is you have, um, a market that’s very easy to manipulate and a market that has a lot of basis risk where, um, the price you may be hedging against actually has nothing to

24:22 按照市场价格来做，也就是你实际能买到这些额度的价格。对。所以听众们，我们上次简单聊过这个话题，不过人们常常会震惊地发现，比如说，信用违约掉期市场的规模是其所承保债券规模的12倍，差不多就是这样；又比如，抵押贷款再保险之类的市场，其规模也大于底层的实物交割规模。所以这就是实物交割和现金结算的区别。对，而且基本上，现金结算就像《大空头》里那种典型的旁注式押注，他们……24:22 do with the price that, um, the market, you can actually buy the capacity for. Yeah. So for, listeners, uh, we, we talked about this briefly last time, but, um, people are often shocked to find out that let’s say the market for credit default swaps is 12 times the, the, the size of the bonds that they insure, uh, something like that, or like, uh, the, the markets for mortgage, um, sort of reinsurance or, uh, all that is, is larger than the underlying physical settlement. So that’s why physical versus cash settled. Yeah. And, and like basically cash settlements are like exactly the kind of, uh, the side bet that you see in the big short, um, where, uh, they,

24:59 它们可能，嗯，可能跟底层事物本身有关，也可能无关。而且它可能，可能被用作其他各种事物的整体替代指标。是的。就是这样，而且你肯定不希望它失控。对。说清楚一点，我们认为，嗯，现金结算作为一种未来的概念，是个很棒的主意。是的。嗯，我们只是觉得，它应该以实物结算为基础。对。因为正如你所说，这是一种旁注。嗯，这就有点像是，在进行实物结算之前，你先把未来变现，我是说，差不多就是这个意思，虽然我觉得人们已经在这么做了。对。完全正确。人们试图在进行实物结算之前就从中获利。人们会对各种各样的事情这么做，包括24:59 they may, uh, may or may not have anything to do with the underlying thing itself. And it may, may be used as a proxy for overall other stuff. Yes. That, and you don’t want to, that to go out of control. Yeah. So to be clear, we think, um, cash settlement as a future concept is a great idea. Yeah. Um, we just think it should be derived from physical settlement. Yeah. because as you said, it’s a side bet. Um, and it would be kind of like if you, I mean, be kind of like if you made a cash of the future before you made the physical settlement, um, which I think people are kind of doing already. Yeah. Totally. People are trying to make cash on it before you make the physical settlement. And people do that for all sorts of things, including

25:34 初创公司的股票。是的。对。就像你可以买卖一份虚构的 OpenAI 股票，但它跟实际股票毫无关系。是的。嗯，而且很多这类东西的结果都很糟糕。嗯，比如说，如果你发行了一种……嗯，如果你开始出售……嗯，一种尚不存在的股票的衍生品，那就不太妙了。嗯，是啊。是啊。嗯，我的意思是，我们做的一件事是，我以前是做货币交易的，对吧？是的。利率交易我也做过。我们做的一件事是，大家会聚在一起开个会，然后说：这是伦敦银行同业拆借利率（LIBOR）。是的。然后大家都同意：这就是……每月的定盘利率，然后我们都……25:34 startup stock. Yes. Right. Like you can buy and sell a made up share of open AI, but it’s nothing to do with the actual share. Yes. Um, and lots of those go very poorly. Um, like it would be kind of bad if you made a, um, it would be bad if you started selling, um, the, the derivative on a stock that doesn’t exist yet. Um, yeah. Yeah. Well, so I mean, one thing that we do, so I used to be a currency trader, right. Yeah. And, interest rates as well. And what, one thing we do is you have a board that gets together and says like, this is the London interbank offered rate LIBOR. Yes. And we all agree like this is the, the, the monthly fixing and we all

26:12，按那个定盘价进行交易。是的。呃，三年后某个时候，这还有意义吗？所以，关键问题是 LIBOR 曾遭到操纵。是的，这是我们目前担心的事。有 12 家银行？是的。嗯，我们担心的是存在一个非常相似的问题：有人可以操纵某个指数。嗯，我们的看法是，之所以能操纵这个指数，是因为很多指数所依据的数据量非常少，而且这些数据与购买一份新的储备合约的实际价格关联不大。嗯，这正是我们担心的。好的。26:12 trade to that fixing. Yes. Uh, is that even meaningful at some point in three years from now? So critically LIBOR was manipulated. Yes. our concern at the moment. there’s 12 banks? Yeah. Yes. Um, well, our concern is there’s a very similar problem, um, where you can manipulate an index. Um, our impression is why you can manipulate that index is because a lot of the indexes are based on a very small amount of data that has, um, uh, not a lot of correlation with the actual price of buying a new reserve contract. Um, that’s what we’re concerned about. Okay.

26:47 有意思。嗯，好吧。我觉得，我觉得这大概就是目前的情况了。呃，嗯，我觉得今天另一个话题是，你们，你们，你们，你们谈到了一个和 Jump 有关的活动，而且你们和 Silicon Data 是朋友。呃，你们从这些其他参与者身上学到了什么？比如说，有哪些主要参与者做的事情很有意思，值得特别提一下？哦。嗯，我们很看好 Silicon Data and Compute Exchange。嗯，我觉得他们也是很早就进入这个领域的。嗯，我觉得他们正在合理地探索一条我们认为可能会走的路，而我们很可能最终会成为他们的合作伙伴。26:47 Interesting. Um, all right. I think, I think that’s the, the, the rough state of things. Uh, um, I think the other part of just, just today is, uh, you, you, you, you talked about an event with jump and you’re, you’re friends with Silicon data. Uh, what are you learning from all these other players? Like who are the major players that you would want to call out as like doing interesting things? Ooh. Um, so we’re big fans of Silicon data and compute exchange. Um, I think they were also very early to this. Um, and I think they are doing like a reasonable shot at the, a path that we think, um, that we’ll likely end up being partners with.

27:23 嗯，你能区分一下你们各自不同的发展路径吗？总体来说，他们做的是现金结算，我们做的是实物结算。嗯，我们认为两种方式都可以存在，也都应该存在，而且它们彼此之间算是互利共赢。所以完全没问题。我觉得他们是这个领域最早的一批参与者之一，而且很明显，他们比其他任何人都早得多就押注了这条路。我觉得这么做非常值得敬佩。嗯，你提到了 Jump。SemiAnalysis、Jump，这些都是正在崛起的参与者。就我而言，你是第一个让我接触到这个领域的人。是啊。后来我看到其他这些人也都进来了，我就想，行吧，看来这里确实有事正在发生。27:23 Um, can you distinguish like your, your different paths? So, um, the general just is they’re doing cash settlement. We’re doing physical settlement. Um, we think both can exist and should exist. Um, and that they’re sort of mutually beneficial to each other. Um, and so totally fine. Um, so I think they are one of the earliest in the space and I think they are, very clearly took the bet, um, well before anybody else did. And I think that’s like very honorable to do. Um, um, you mentioned, uh, jump. Semi-analysis, jump. Like these are the players emerging. Like as far, like you were my first introduction to this. Yeah. And then, and I see all these other guys coming in and I’m like, okay, like it’s something’s happening here.

27:58 我对这个领域的了解没有你那么清楚。是啊。那么，我们看到的参与者大致分为几类：有些人在努力制定更好的标准。我觉得 SemiAnalysis 正在尝试推动制定更好的标准。还有一些人在做残值保险之类的业务。这个领域有不少不同的公司。我对它们都不太了解，但我知道、知道这是一个概念，而且我觉得这一点很重要。还有些人在尝试做存款贷款，比如替你承担云服务方面的信用风险。如今，围绕如何解决算力领域的金融瓶颈，正在形成一个由多家公司组成的生态系统。27:58 I don’t know the landscape as clearly as you do. Yeah. So, um, the categories of folks that we’ve seen is there’s folks that are trying to set better standards. So semi-analysis I think is working to try and create better standards. Um, there’s folks that are trying to do, um, residual value insurance and so on. Um, there’s a number of different companies in this space. I don’t know any of them super well, but, um, I know, know this is a concept and I think that’s important. Um, there are folks that are trying to do, um, uh, deposit, um, lending where like they’ll front your credit risk for the cloud. There’s an ecosystem of companies that are forming around how do we resolve the financial bottlenecks of compute.

28:34 嗯，看到这一点很酷。我觉得实际上，在这个生态系统里，你需要买家和卖家。你需要一位分析师。你还需要，呃，我们说过保险，或者，呃，那个叫什么来着，残值。对，对。而且，我们希望外面能有这样一个健康的生态系统。嗯，不过显然你们正在解决实物交割这个问题，这真的很有意思。嗯，好吧。那么，我的意思是，我们可以聊聊硬核技术方面，因为显然你们也在招聘，呃，特别厉害的工程师。对。介绍一下你们的技术栈吧。嗯，我们做云服务能做的一切，只不过我们不是那个……28:34 Um, and it is cool to see. I think effectively what you want in this ecosystem is buyers and sellers. You want an analyst. You want, uh, we said insurance or, uh, what’s the, uh, residual value. Yeah. Yeah. and you, we want this like healthy ecosystem out there. Um, but obviously you guys are owning the problem of physical settlement, which, which is really interesting. Um, okay. So, I mean, we can go into like the, the hard tech side because obviously you are also hiring, uh, for extremely cracked engineers. Yeah. describe your stack. Um, we do all the things a cloud does without being the

29:10 云。嗯，我的意思是，我们不拥有硬件。我们之所以不拥有硬件，是因为如果拥有硬件，我们就能操纵远期市场。所以我们必须保持中立，必须独立。嗯，这就让公司出现了很多有点奇怪的情况。嗯，不过，要进行实物交割，就必须实地考察，得去数据中心。嗯，还得设计物料清单，并确保……基本上还得做供应链咨询，与不同的 OEM 厂商建立合作关系，确保设备能够交付。29:10 cloud. Um, as in we don’t own the hardware. the reason why we don’t own the hardware is because if we did, we would be able to manipulate the forwards market. So we have to be Switzerland. We have to be independent. Um, which creates a lot of sort of strange things about the company. Um, but in order to do physical settlement, you have to do site visits. have to visit the data center. Um, you have to, um, you have to design the bill of materials and ensure that, um, you have to basically do like supply chain consulting, um, where you have relationships with different OEMs that, um, ensure that things get delivered

29:46，准时。嗯，然后你得做集群架构。嗯，呃，也就是设计集群本身。嗯，然后你要部署机架，或者与合作伙伴一起部署机架并监督整个过程。嗯，接着你要做背板管理。也就是说，你要接管 PDU、交换机、DPU、UFM 和 BMC，并负责运行围绕你所销售节点的整套配套设施。你说的“你”，是指 SF Compute 的员工。是啊。哇。嗯，所以，呃，当你从云服务商那里购买一个节点时，里面有裸机，但裸机周围还有这一大堆东西……29:46 on time. Um, then you have to, um, do cluster architecture. Um, uh, so you’re sort of designing the cluster itself. Um, then you’re, um, rolling out racks or you’re working with partners to roll out racks and supervising that. Um, then you’re doing, uh, backplane management. So you’re taking over the, um, uh, PDUs and the switches and the DPUs and, um, UFM and BMC and you’re operating, um, the whole, um, harness around the nodes that you’re selling. When you say you as an SF compute employees. Yeah. Wow. Um, so, uh, when you buy a node from a cloud, um, there’s the bare metal, but there’s all this shit around the bare

30:23 裸金属。是的。嗯，要让那个裸金属节点运行起来，你就得负责运维其他所有东西。然后我们……因为传统上，数据中心的工作就是把其中一些事情从你身上分担走。是的。做这些的是我们。好。对。嗯，不过你们不是在做数据中心业务。你们不是像 Equinix 那样的公司。我们，我们不算是在做数据中心业务。嗯，我们做的是……我们提供超算即服务。嗯，这意味着人们会来找我们说，你知道，30:23 metal. Yeah. Um, and in order to make that bare metal node work, you have to operate everything else. Then we. Because I just like traditionally the job of the data center is to extract some of this away from you. Yeah. We’re the ones that do that. Okay. Right. Um, but you’re not, you’re not in the data center business. You’re not the sort of equinixes of the world. We’re, we’re not in the data center business sort of, um, what we do work with is, so we offer supercomputing as a service. Um, and what this means is folks come to us and say, you know,

30:58 我有 X，这里的 X 是指，我有，你知道，我这里有 X 兆瓦。有时候他们可能是说自己有一座数据中心。嗯，就是想把它改造成一个 GPU 集群。比如我可以出售这个 GPU 集群，也可以把数据中心卖给别人，或者自己成为云服务商。然后我们就去找他们，说：太好了。嗯，我们会帮你们转型成为云服务商。我们负责超级计算部分，你们负责数据中心。我们合作吧。然后我们就能把服务卖出去，我也能赚钱。嗯，有时候，对方拥有的是可以改造成数据中心的设施，这种情况下，我们基本上会负责项目管理，把它推进到这一层。30:58 I’ve got X where X is, I’ve got, you know, X megawatts here. And maybe sometimes they mean I’ve got a data center. Um, that’s like, um, would like to turn into a GPU cluster. Like my options are, I could sell the GPU cluster or I could sell the data center to somebody or I could become the cloud. And then we go to them and say, great. Um, we will turn you into the cloud. We’re the supercomputing part. You’re the data center. Let’s partner together. And then we will sell and I’ll make money. Um, sometimes it’s people who have something that could turn into a data center, in which case we’re going to basically project manage that up to the layer.

31:33 嗯，然后我们会和那些……我们会和那些人合作，把他们有电力供应的土地，嗯，或者他们拥有的其他资源，嗯，通过与合作伙伴合作改造成数据中心。嗯，之后超算部分就由我们接手。好。这要求我们内部具备一定的数据中心专业知识，但我们不会亲自承建。嗯，所以，是的。对。所以这有一定的模块化特点，因为我们需要应对不同的场景。对。呃，有人曾经把我们形容成计算领域的 Palantir，嗯，因为每次都是全新的挑战。31:33 Um, and then we will work with those far, we’ll work with those folks to turn their powered land, um, or whatever they have, um, into a data center by working with partners. Um, and then we take over at the supercomputing part. Okay. This requires us to have some sort of data center expertise in house, but we don’t self-perform builds. Um, so yeah. Yeah. So it’s, uh, somewhat modular because you have different scenarios you need to play under. Yeah. Uh, someone once described us as like, um, uh, like Palantir for compute, um, because it’s like these, each time it’s this new rodeo.

32:10 嗯，呃，不过，而且我们喜欢和合作伙伴——双方的合作伙伴——深入合作。是的。呃，主要是在美国，主要是在美国，但我们的业务遍及全球。是的。到某个时候，SF Compute 这个名字会不会名不副实？呃，我们在全球各地部署集群。是的。而在这过程中，我们会与那些自己也想在全球各地成为云服务提供商的人合作。嗯，他们看起来像是主权计算领域的参与者。嗯，我们向主权计算领域的参与者提出的方案很棒。呃，我们可以帮你在自己的国家建立云服务。嗯，我们会带来旧金山的需求，也会带来旧金山的专业知识。32:10 Um, uh, but, and we like, we, we deeply partner with folks. On both sides. Yeah. Uh, and primarily the U S primarily the U S, but we are operate around the world. Yeah. At some point does SF compute become a misnomer? Uh, so when, so we’re deploying clusters all around the world. Yeah. And when we do that, we’re working with people who themselves are trying to be clouds all around the world. Um, they look like sovereign compute players. Um, and our pitch to sovereign compute is amazing. Uh, let’s help you set up a cloud in your own country. Um, and we will bring the San Francisco offtake. We’ll bring the San Francisco expertise.

32:45 我们会搭建这些集群。嗯，这就是我们全部的业务。啊，嗯，我们会做成的。你们已经公布的主要合作伙伴有哪些？嗯，有哪些大牌是可以透露的？嗯，没有可以透露的。真的？哇。呃，我们预计一两周内会有一些公告，嗯，届时会宣布合作伙伴。是啊，诸如此类。好。祝你们好运。是啊，不，我是说，呃，我觉得这对每个想弄清楚主权 AI 投资方向的国家来说都很有意思。嗯，有意思的是，旧金山似乎仍然算是一个品牌名，而且，呃，这个品牌确实很有市场吸引力。32:45 We’ll set up the clusters. Um, that’s our whole business. Ah, um, we’re going to make it. Who are your main, uh, your biggest announced partners that you can name? Um, nobody I can name. Really? Wow. Uh, we will have some announcements, um, in a week or two, um, that we expect to come on. Yeah. All things sort of. Sure. Sure. Good luck. Yeah. No, I mean, uh, I, I think this is really interesting for every country to like, who’s, who’s like investing in sovereign AI to figure this out. Um, and it’s interesting that like SF is still sort of like that brand name and, uh, that, that is, that is very marketable.

33:20 所以，我觉得其中一件有意思的事，就是深入思考一下这个市场。英伟达显然是房间里的那头 800 磅大猩猩。为什么他们不做 SF Compute？答案依然是市场操纵。不过，我们还是来仔细看看多个参与方各自的激励机制。对。我们的印象是，英伟达做不了这件事，但它的存在能让英伟达受益匪浅。他们做不了的原因在于，这样一来，他们就不够独立，无法让人们在这个市场上交易。如果人们不在这个市场上交易，那么流动性就不足以让贷款方以远期市场为抵押进行融资。33:20 So I think one of the interesting things is just thinking through this market. NVIDIA is obviously like the 800-pound gorilla in the room. Why didn’t they make SF Compute? And again, the answer is going to be market manipulation. But let’s just really get into the incentives of the multiple players. Yeah. So our impression is that NVIDIA can’t make it, but benefits tremendously from it existing. The reason why they can’t make it is because they would then not be independent enough for people to trade on it. If you don’t trade on it, then you don’t have enough liquidity for lenders to finance against the forwards market.

33:55 这也是为什么 Crusoe、CoreWeave 和 Lambda 不行，为什么那些超大规模云服务商不行，为什么 Base 10、Fireworks 和 Modal 也不行——因为他们在那一端的需求太旺盛了。这件事对整个行业都有好处，因为它能降低融资成本。但没人能做到，除非他们放弃承接所有大型推理业务和大型云服务订单的能力。要做成这件事，你就得扼杀自己的业务。这就是为什么没人这么做。从结构上说，他们根本就不是为此而设计的。而你基本上就是在降低摩擦，这就是你全部的收入来源。33:55 This is also why Crusoe and CoreWeave and Lambda, why the hyperscalers can’t make it, why Base 10 and Fireworks and Modal can’t make it because they have too much demand on that side. This is a thing that benefits the entire industry because it makes the financing costs go down. But nobody can make it unless they give up the ability to do all the big inference money and all the big cloud deals. You have to kill your business in order to make this. That’s why nobody does it. like structurally, they’re not set up to do that. And you’re basically reducing friction and that’s all your revenue.

34:30 你们宣布了一些里程碑。其实我忘了在开头提这件事。能不能再说一遍都有哪些里程碑，顺便小小地庆祝一下？我们已经完成了数亿美元的交易量。还有相当多的新集群即将上线。我最兴奋的事情是，我们推出了许多新功能，让 SF Compute 对平台即服务公司来说变得非常实用。比如，我们允许客户细分……34:30 You’ve announced some milestones. Actually, I forgot to say that up front. Can you repeat what they are and just take a victory lap a little bit? We’ve closed several hundred million dollars of volume. We have a significant number of new clusters on the way. And then the things that I think I’m most excited about is we’ve shipped a whole bunch of new features that make SF Compute very viable for platform-as-a-service companies. An example is we allow customers to subdivide

35:06 他们的 InfiniBand 网络，无需向我们提出请求。很多云服务商在你购买服务时，会给你一套 InfiniBand 网络。如果你想重新规划这套 InfiniBand 网络的连接，就需要联系他们，然后他们会为你做一些操作。现在，我们可以随时为客户完成这些操作。我觉得这真的很棒，因为它非常契合市场需求：你可以重新规划网络，以便扩展或缩减集群。你会把这描述为虚拟化数据中心并使其可编程吗？是的，我们正在虚拟化数据中心，并使其可编程。这样一来，你原本只有在拥有整个……时才能获得的所有东西，都可以……35:06 their InfiniBand fabric without having to ask us. So many clouds, when you go to buy them, they will give you one InfiniBand fabric. And then if you want to redraw the lines of that InfiniBand fabric, you need to contact them and they will then do something for you. We now can do that on the fly for customers, which I think is really great because it interfaces with the market really well where you want to be able to redraw things in order to scale up and down your clusters. Would you describe this as like you’re virtualizing the data center and making it programmable? Yeah, we’re virtualizing the data center and making it programmable. So all the stuff that you would have gotten if you had owned the

35:43 硬件方面，我们正尝试将其虚拟化，我觉得这让我们很兴奋。有意思的是，上一次发生这种事还是在云计算时代，那真的很酷。最后，我想问的是，你们对大家有什么行动号召？是找工程师吗？还是说“把你们的供应给我”？到底是什么？如果你想拥有一个 GPU 集群，并希望获得它的剩余价值，想把它纳入你的投资组合，我们很乐意与你合作，共同搭建这个 GPU 集群。我们会接手，并负责其中的超级计算部分，然后……35:43 hardware, we’re trying to virtualize that, which I think is exciting to us. It’s funny, like the last time this happened was like the cloud, which is really cool. And then finally, you know, I think what is your call to action for people? You know, is it engineers? Is it like, give me your supply? Like, what is it? If you would like to own a GPU cluster and you want the residual value from it, you want to have it for your portfolio, we would love to work with you in order to build that GPU cluster. We will take over and we will do the supercomputing portions of that and

36:18 确保一切顺利。SLA 由我们负责。之后，如果发现这是个糟糕的主意，你需要退出那个集群，我们可以马上把那个集群卖给别人，这样就不会影响你的资产负债表。这个提案很简单。好，非常感谢你抽出时间。你为这个行业做出了很大的贡献，我也很高兴能成为你的朋友。谢谢，我很感激。好，谢谢。就这样。36:18 ensure the things go right. We own the SLA. And then if it turns out that that was a bad idea that you need out of that cluster, we can immediately sell that cluster to somebody else so it doesn’t hit your balance sheet. Very simple pitch. Well, thank you so much for your time. You’re doing a great service to the industry and I just am happy to be your friend. I appreciate it. All right. Thanks. That’s it.