The Next 100x For Ai Hardware Performance Will Be Harder

Google’s two most important techies, Jeff Dean and Amin Vahdat, gave an opening keynote at Hot Chips 2023 this week, discussing the TPUv5e AI processor and its surrounding system, interconnect, and software stack. Ten years ago, Dean figured out that Google would have to double its datacenter footprint if it added AI functions to its search engine, leading to the creation of the TPU. The TPUv5e is likely based on 5 nanometer processes and has at least twice the raw peak performance of the TPUv4. Google Cloud Next 2023 revealed some details about the TPUv5e, which is expected to deliver around 30 percent better bang for the buck than the TPUv4 instances.