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posted by CoolHand on Friday May 20 2016, @03:06PM   Printer-friendly
from the skynet-development dept.

Google has lifted the lid off of an internal project to create custom application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) for machine learning tasks. The result is what they are calling a "TPU":

[We] started a stealthy project at Google several years ago to see what we could accomplish with our own custom accelerators for machine learning applications. The result is called a Tensor Processing Unit (TPU), a custom ASIC we built specifically for machine learning — and tailored for TensorFlow. We've been running TPUs inside our data centers for more than a year, and have found them to deliver an order of magnitude better-optimized performance per watt for machine learning. This is roughly equivalent to fast-forwarding technology about seven years into the future (three generations of Moore's Law). [...] TPU is an example of how fast we turn research into practice — from first tested silicon, the team
had them up and running applications at speed in our data centers within 22 days.

The processors are already being used to improve search and Street View, and were used to power AlphaGo during its matches against Go champion Lee Sedol. More details can be found at Next Platform, Tom's Hardware, and AnandTech.


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  • (Score: 2) by Fnord666 on Friday May 20 2016, @07:17PM

    by Fnord666 (652) on Friday May 20 2016, @07:17PM (#348872) Homepage

    So I'm curious. What does it cost to build an ASIC like this for a custom purpose?

    Ok I guess this is a little outside of the hobbyist's budget.

    Krewell points out that designing a chip from scratch, even a simple one, can cost $100 million or more.

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  • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday May 20 2016, @07:58PM

    by bob_super (1357) on Friday May 20 2016, @07:58PM (#348881)

    That's why you use an FPGA unless you have a Google-size budget.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 20 2016, @08:28PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 20 2016, @08:28PM (#348890)

      well there is that guy who built a 6502 cpu clone from discrete (surface mounted...) components, so it's theoretically possible for the hobbyist...

  • (Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Friday May 20 2016, @08:36PM

    by Scruffy Beard 2 (6030) on Friday May 20 2016, @08:36PM (#348892)

    In the Bitcoin community the cost of an ASIC run was often quoted at $2M. I wonder if $100M includes several iterations.

    • (Score: 2) by jcross on Friday May 20 2016, @09:36PM

      by jcross (4009) on Friday May 20 2016, @09:36PM (#348903)

      I believe the majority of it would be the services of the ASIC design team. Seems to me like bitcoin folks are mostly not corporate, so they would be unlikely to include that part as an explicit expense.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 20 2016, @09:16PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 20 2016, @09:16PM (#348898)

    If you have to ask... you can't afford it!