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AMD Enhances Visual Language Models with Advanced Processing Techniques
Caroline Bishop
Jan 09, 2025 03:07
AMD introduces optimizations for Visual Language Models, enhancing speed and accuracy in diverse applications like medical imaging and retail analytics.
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has announced significant enhancements to Visual Language Models (VLMs), focusing on improving the speed and accuracy of these models across various applications, as reported by the company’s AI Group. VLMs integrate visual and textual data interpretation, proving essential in sectors ranging from medical imaging to retail analytics.
Optimization Techniques for Enhanced Performance
AMD’s approach involves several key optimization techniques. The use of mixed-precision training and parallel processing allows VLMs to merge visual and text data more efficiently. This improvement enables faster and more precise data handling, which is crucial in industries that demand high accuracy and quick response times.
One notable technique is holistic pretraining, which trains models on both image and text data concurrently. This method builds stronger connections between modalities, leading to better accuracy and flexibility. AMD’s pretraining pipeline accelerates this process, making it accessible for clients lacking extensive resources for large-scale model training.
Improving Model Adaptability
Instruction tuning is another enhancement, allowing models to follow specific prompts accurately. This is particularly beneficial for targeted applications such as tracking customer behavior in retail settings. AMD’s instruction tuning improves the precision of models in these scenarios, providing clients with tailored insights.
In-context learning, a real-time adaptability feature, enables models to adjust responses based on input prompts without further fine-tuning. This flexibility is advantageous in structured applications like inventory management, where models can quickly categorize items based on specific criteria.
Addressing Limitations in Visual Language Models
Traditional VLMs often struggle with sequential image processing or video analysis. AMD addresses these limitations by optimizing VLM performance on its hardware, facilitating smoother sequential input handling. This advancement is critical for applications requiring contextual understanding over time, such as monitoring disease progression in medical imaging.
Enhancements in Video Analysis
AMD’s improvements extend to video content understanding, a challenging area for standard VLMs. By streamlining processing, AMD enables models to efficiently handle video data, providing rapid identification and summarization of key events. This capability is particularly useful in security applications, where it reduces the time spent analyzing extensive footage.
Full-Stack Solutions for AI Workloads
AMD Instinct™ GPUs and the open-source AMD ROCm™ software stack form the backbone of these advancements, supporting a wide range of AI workloads from edge devices to data centers. ROCm’s compatibility with major machine learning frameworks enhances the deployment and customization of VLMs, fostering continuous innovation and adaptability.
Through advanced techniques like quantization and mixed-precision training, AMD reduces model size and speeds up processing, cutting training times significantly. These capabilities make AMD’s solutions suitable for diverse performance needs, from autonomous driving to offline image generation.
For additional insights, explore the resources on Vision-Text Dual Encoding and LLaMA3.2 Vision available through the AMD Community.
Image source: Shutterstock
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Hut 8 CEO weighs in on the bull and bear markets from a mining perspective
In January 2023, during the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) annual conference in Davos, Switzerland, Jaime Leverton, CEO of Hut 8, a crypto mining entity that trades as a public company, sat down with me for a fireside chat at the Crypto Summit on the Promenade. Leverton outlined some of her views on the recent shakeout in the cryptocurrency market and reflected on how Bitcoin (BTC) mining fares during the current turbulent period for the industry.
Throughout 2021 and 2022, the crypto industry experienced significant growth, followed by bear market struggles, bankruptcies and job cuts. Leverton took on the position of leading Hut 8 Mining as CEO a little over two years ago and experienced those ups and downs from the front line.
“Obviously, all of us in crypto have experienced the volatility,” Leverton said when asked about her thoughts on the last couple of years while leading Hut 8 through the crypto industry’s ups and downs. “I think the mining industry, in particular, has gone through some pretty big swings in the last two years,” she added, noting that “2022 was really the perfect storm from a Bitcoin mining industry perspective.” She continued:
“We had record-high hash rate, languishing Bitcoin price and energy crisis, which came quickly on the back of one of the biggest bull markets we’ve seen for the crypto mining industry in particular. We saw more than 20 new mining companies go public. At the peak, we had close to 40 publicly-traded Bitcoin mining companies in North America alone.”
A pioneer in the Bitcoin mining sector as far as public entities go, Hut 8 hit the Canadian market in 2018 and subsequently the Nasdaq in 2022, Leverton noted. The 2021 crypto bull run attracted sizable capital inflows to digital asset mining, which increased leverage, according to the Hut 8 CEO.
“Then you couple that with the perfect storm that I referenced happened in 2022 — the industry has really been shaken up, and people that took on a lot of leverage we’ve seen struggle, and so we’re now in a period of starting to see some consolidation in the space, we’re starting to see more companies just start to diversify their portfolios, something that we at Hut did — we started to do in the bull market as well.”
Leverton made it onto Cointelegraph’s annual Top 100 list of the crypto industry’s most impactful players. She ranks 73rd in the 2023 edition.
Later in the interview, Leverton discussed what Bitcoin mining aims to deliver. “I think the most fascinating conversation that we need to be having around Bitcoin mining is actually the promise of it,” adding:
“The beautiful thing about Bitcoin mining — I was a founding member of the Bitcoin Mining Council, and we actually released our latest report earlier this week, which shows the energy use by the Bitcoin industry by the blockchain is 58.9% renewably sourced now and that continues to improve quarter over quarter.”
The 58.9% figure comes from a report detailing 2022 Q4 survey results from the Bitcoin Mining Council, released in January 2023. Energy usage has been a debated topic in the crypto space, with Tesla CEO Elon Musk expressing interest in the subject. One argument from cybersecurity engineer Michel Khazzaka is that the mainstream banking world dwarfs Bitcoin in terms of energy usage, as per a different Cointelegraph interview.
Related: Hut 8 merger would’ve happened even without FTX or crypto turmoil, says CEO
“Where the excitement comes for me and for our space is how Bitcoin mining can really push the envelope around innovation and investment in renewables in a truly significant way,” Leverton said, adding:
“We saw just an explosion of Bitcoin miners starting to use waste methane, flare gas, landfills to generate energy and to keep that carbon from being released into the atmosphere.”
According to Leverton: “The beauty of a Bitcoin mine is it doesn’t need to be connected to transmission lines, so you can actually mine Bitcoin directly where waste energy is being created.” She noted that miners are starting to develop in rural communities in Africa and added that they resolved to self-funding, which is “the most exciting thing that’s happening in the mining space in 2023 and 2024.”
Brit who consulted North Korea on crypto reportedly detained in Moscow
The Moscow bureau of Interpol detained a British national charged by the United States Department of Justice (DoJ). The man is accused of conspiring to violate U.S. sanctions on North Korea.
According to local media, on Feb. 21, Christopher Emms was arrested in Moscow upon the “red notice” from Interpol. Th 31-year-old British citizen was detained in the hostel where he was staying.
In April 2022, alongside Spanish national Alejandro Cao De Benos, Emms allegedly provided instructions to North Korea on how it could use blockchain and cryptocurrency to launder money and evade sanctions. The two planned and organized the 2019 Pyongyang Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Conference.
The third participant in the conspiracy is Virgil Griffith, a former Ethereum developer. He was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in November 2019, pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to 63 months in prison. Emms could face up to 20 years in prison for one count of conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
Related: North Korea stole more crypto in 2022 than any other year
Radha Stirling, the founder of Due Process International, a nongovernmental organization that helps to defend human rights in the face of international enforcement agencies, previously claimed that there was no strong evidence against Emms:
“Precisely because he did nothing wrong; he provided no information to North Korea that doesn’t already appear on the first page of Google.”
In September 2022, Saudi Arabia rejected the American extradition request for the lack of a legal basis and released Emms after an eight-month travel ban. He immediately left the country and fled to Russia. However, despite the country being targeted by the DoJ’s efforts to enforce the financial sanctions in the crypto sector, the local officials decided to help their American counterparts.