The Finite Field Assembly Programming Language : a cuda alternative designed to emulate GPUs on CPUs

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hpxvzhjfgb@reddit

I don't know what this is or what it has to do with GPUs and I don't really care, but I had a quick look though the repo because the name caught my attention, and I don't think you know what a finite field is. maybe I'm wrong, but the code that I skimmed through seems to just be about the rings Z/nZ, i.e. modular arithmetic. also I saw an array called something like fieldOrders that contained 15, 17, 19, which is strange because there is no field of order 15.

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Serious-Regular@reddit

Not that I know what all this person is trying to accomplish but they're using Chinese remainder theorem https://github.com/LeetArxiv/Finite-Field-Assembly/blob/main/ff_asm_runtime.h#L120 to factorize something (shot in the dark guess non-prime power orders).

Come to think this is probably just LA over finite fields using the Chinese remainder theorem. Actually not sure why GPU is mentioned because the implementation uses gmp.

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hpxvzhjfgb@reddit

I saw the use of chinese remainder theorem, but that just allows you split ℤ/nℤ into a product of ℤ/p^(k)ℤs, and the finite field of order p^k is not ℤ/p^(k)ℤ (unless k=1).

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Serious-Regular@reddit

Ring field whatever. The point is to use CRT to perform operations in the individual quotients, in parallel, and then pull back into the product ring using CRT. And like I said this is definitely a legit technique.

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apnorton@reddit

Ring field whatever

Eh, the point isn't the difference between rings and fields; the point is that someone who "studied [finite field theory] at Yale" wouldn't think there's a field of order 15.

To be honest, the README reads like a scammer, or someone trying to overinflate their accomplishments: 1. All but one chapter of the documentation of their code is locked behind a paywall on substack

No clear, explained benefit of any advantage of their code over a naive emulation of a GPU. (e.g. no concrete speedup numbers, description of how this scales, etc.)
Appeals to authority/prestige "studied [buzzwords] at Yale," and using terms that sound impressive to the layman (CRT, primes, linear congruences, etc.) without explanation of how they connect to the topic at hand or how they're relevant
Calls the terms "congruences" and "primes" "silly math jargon" on their substack.
Appeals to "that big corporation is evil" through their mission statement of "democratize AI compute such that the systems of the future are neither controlled by rich countries nor big tech."
Ends their single post of documentation with a call for funding

Not saying they are a scammer, but it just seems... a little suspect to me.

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Serious-Regular@reddit

man what are you even on about...

the impl is literally two headers (and one of them is a list of primes). if you can't figure out the what/where/how/why of this just by skimming those headers (rather than relying on reading into the README) then you shouldn't be on r/programming

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floodyberry@reddit

what

an inefficient way to do simple math

where

this repo and his paywalled substack

how

multiprecision arithmetic and number theory

why

if it's not to entice people to sign up for his substack i have no fucking clue, because it will never be a useful or efficient "gpu emulator"

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Serious-Regular@reddit

bruh you people are high

https://leetarxiv.substack.com/archive?sort=new

i don't see any paywall?

it's just a kid trying stuff out. leave it alone

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floodyberry@reddit

try viewing one of the articles

https://twitter.com/murage_kibicho/status/1867638813343850939

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Serious-Regular@reddit

Man who fuckin cares seriously

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thyraxe@reddit

just to see if i get this: there's no finite field of order 15 since that polynomial would be reducable because 15 is not a prime number, right?

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Serious-Regular@reddit

You're thinking too hard. For a group to be a field the multiplication operation needs to be invertible. For that to be true you need unique inverses and that can only happen if the characteristic is a prime power because otherwise multiplication will "wrap around and overlap" for the divisors of the characteristic. Reducible polynomials blah blah blah are just a corollary of that.

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Emulating one device that has dozens of teraflops on one that offers a fraction of a teraflop is not the solution.