SoylentNews

AnonTechie [soylentnews.org] writes:

If Google’s AI researchers had a sense of humor, they would have called TurboQuant, [research.google] the new, ultra-efficient AI memory compression algorithm announced Tuesday, “Pied Piper” — or, at least that’s what the internet thinks.

The joke is a reference to the fictional startup Pied Piper that was the focus of HBO’s “Silicon Valley” TV series that ran from 2014 to 2019.

The show followed the startup’s founders as they navigated the tech ecosystem, facing challenges like competition from larger companies, fundraising, technology and product issues, and even ( much to our delight [techcrunch.com] ) wowing the judges at a fictional version of TechCrunch Disrupt. [techcrunch.com]

Pied Piper’s breakthrough technology on the TV show was a compression algorithm that greatly reduced file sizes with near-lossless compression. Google Research’s new TurboQuant is also about extreme compression without quality loss, but applied to a core bottleneck in AI systems. Hence, the comparisons.

Google Research described the technology as a novel way to shrink AI’s working memory without impacting performance. The compression method, which uses a form of vector quantization to clear cache bottlenecks in AI processing, would essentially allow AI to remember more information while taking up less space and maintaining accuracy, according to the researchers.

[Source]: TechCrunch [techcrunch.com]

Original Submission