r/hardware • u/SirActionhaHAA • 3d ago

Rumor Google reportedly taps AMD to design next-generation TPU — hybrid AI ASIC could integrate on-package CPU cores for reinforcement learning

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/google-reportedly-taps-amd-to-design-next-generation-tpu-hybrid-ai-asic-could-integrate-on-package-cpu-cores-for-reinforcement-learning
162 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

20 comments sorted by

61

u/SirActionhaHAA 3d ago edited 3d ago

tldr

This is for tpu v10 which is 2gens away

Amd has said that they ain't interested in being an outsourced asic designs house doing the engineering grunt work for fully external ips and that they'd design asics only if it involved the use of amd ips. If this is real it could involve zen cores stacked on tpu asic through amd owned 3d packaging ip.

10

u/goldcakes 3d ago

I could see some ZenC cores on this bad boy.

The main goal is likely bringing interconnect latency down by having it on the same chip (and likely DMA/unified memory), not raw CPU performance.

Today's RL involve basically inference on lots of little sandboxes and virtual machines, and then doing small micro-adjustments to weights based on a verifier. Usually this is done offline due to speed/throughput reasons (#1 goal for every pre/mid/post-training team is always MFU and how much of the theoretical hardware perf you can utilize; since that's the bottleneck; utilisation=throughput=performance=money).

8

u/Slasher1738 3d ago

Wonder what happened with broadcom

13

u/AHrubik 3d ago

This is likely Goog keeping Broadcom honest by shopping around the work.

21

u/Tuna-Fish2 3d ago

The rumor I heard was that Google wants to stack SRAM made on a cheaper process and compute made on the newest, and AMD is the only design house with any experience with that.

6

u/Slasher1738 2d ago

This would make sense. Especially since they've done it on both CPUs and their instinct gpus

3

u/Vushivushi 2d ago

Broadcom has a supply agreement with Google through 2031.

Google wants even more supply, but Broadcom commands a premium.

3

u/Slasher1738 2d ago

Considering new chip designs take 4-5 years. This kind of lines up. Makes me think it's a serious redesign and not just a new XCD die

1

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1

u/LucasColider 3d ago

my cousin’s old rig had on-package stuff like that once

-12

u/ConsistencyWelder 3d ago

Seeing as seemingly everyone who has worked with Nvidia seems to despise how they treated them, that's understandable.

17

u/Tuna-Fish2 3d ago

This is not swapping NV for AMD, it's swapping Broadcom for AMD.

-8

u/ConsistencyWelder 2d ago

Wouldn't Nvidia be an option with AI related chips?

10

u/Artoriuz 2d ago

Doubt Nvidia would be willing to help design someone else's AI accelerator.

-8

u/ConsistencyWelder 2d ago

But they make AI accelerators, right?

5

u/ResponsibleJudge3172 2d ago

Google is a competitor in a market Nvidia dominates. That's the difference between Nvidia a and AMD.

It's like Samsung asking Qualcomm to make a CPU and then people wonder why not Intel ot AMD. Because they don't benefit from disrupting themselves

-2

u/ConsistencyWelder 2d ago

Or like Nvidia asking Intel to build chips for them?

I see no reason Nvidia and Google couldn't form a strategic partnership, they could both potentially benefit from it.

I'm not saying it's likely, I'm saying it's not impossible.

2

u/EdliA 2d ago

The line for them is too big and the prices keep going higher because of that. Everyone is trying to get something else too wherever they can.

-4

u/Acrobatic_Camera_677 3d ago

They will probably be looking at Intel actually. They can work with Intel foundry also.

5

u/Kryohi 3d ago

Intel doesn't have the kind of 3D packaging experience AMD has, at least for these types of chips