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Google Launches Ironwood: Google has released Ironwood, its 7th generation Tensor Processing Unit (TPU).
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AI-Focused Design: Ironwood is specifically designed for advanced AI models like Large Language Models (LLMs) and Mixture of Experts (MoEs), enabling proactive AI and insights generation.
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High Performance: Each Ironwood pod can support up to 9,216 chips, delivering 42.5 Exaflops of computing power. It offers a 24x performance boost compared to the El Capitan supercomputer.
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Energy Efficiency: Ironwood doubles the performance per watt compared to previous generations, using liquid cooling for power efficiency.
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Scalable AI: Ironwood integrates with Google Cloud’s Hypercomputer architecture, enabling scaling of generative AI workloads.
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TPU Specialization:
TPUs, like Ironwood, are Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) designed to accelerate machine learning workloads, specialized for AI computational tasks, differentiating them from CPUs and GPUs. -
TPU vs CPU vs GPU: CPUs are general-purpose, GPUs handle parallel processing (especially graphics), and TPUs accelerate machine learning.
TPUs are optimized for AI tasks with specialized cores. -
Processing Units Explained: Processing units (CPUs, GPUs, TPUs) are hardware components that act as the “brain” of a computer, handling tasks like calculations.
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TPUs for Efficiency: TPUs are engineered to handle tensor operations, processing large data volumes, and executing complex neural networks efficiently, reducing AI model training time significantly.
