Digital Event Horizon
RISC-V's AI champion Tenstorrent scores $693 million investment, cementing its position as a leader in the field with its proprietary AI accelerators based on the permissively licensed RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA). The new funding round is expected to help the company accelerate its plans for developing and commercializing its products.
Tenstorrent secures $693 million investment to develop and commercialize RISC-V-based AI accelerators. The company's Blackhole accelerators have garnered significant attention in the industry for their high-performance capabilities. RISC-V's permissively licensed nature has made it a popular choice among developers of microcontrollers and SoCs for embedded applications. Tenorrent's upcoming Blackhole Galaxy appliance will feature 32 Blackhole accelerators, delivering peak AI compute performance of 23.8 petaFLOPS.
In a significant development that underscores the growing recognition of RISC-V's potential in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Tenstorrent, an AI infrastructure startup founded by semiconductor guru Jim Keller, has secured a massive $693 million investment. This substantial influx of capital is a testament to the company's commitment to developing and commercializing its proprietary AI accelerators based on the permissively licensed RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA).
The investment, which was announced earlier this week, marks a significant milestone for Tenstorrent, which has been actively working on developing AI accelerators using the RISC-V ISA. The company's Blackhole accelerators, featuring 768 RISC-V cores, including 16 big CPU cores and 752 "baby" cores responsible for memory management, networking, system management, PCIe, and other compute-intensive tasks, have garnered significant attention in the industry.
The new investment is a notable endorsement of Tenstorrent's plans to use the open-source RISC-V ISA for workloads like AI. The permissively licensed nature of the base RISC-V ISA allows anyone to use it royalty-free to develop open-source or proprietary close-source products or intellectual property, which can then be shared or licensed. This flexibility has made RISC-V a popular choice among developers of microcontrollers and modest SoCs for embedded applications.
Tenstorrent's Blackhole accelerators are designed to deliver peak AI compute performance of 745 teraFLOPS at FP8, making them a hair faster than Nvidia's A100 and L40S accelerators. However, the chip is not intended to be a standalone part but forms the basis for Tenstorrent's upcoming Blackhole Galaxy appliance. This machine will feature 32 Blackhole accelerators connected in a 4x8 mesh for 23.8 petaFLOPS of FP8 performance, 1TB of memory, and 16TB/sec of raw bandwidth.
The investment, which was led by Samsung, AWF Partners, and Jeff Bezos's investment vehicle, will facilitate Tenstorrent's plans to work on its open-source software stack, enable the company to hire more developers, and expand its footprint. This new funding round is a significant boost for Tenstorrent, which has been actively working on developing AI accelerators using the RISC-V ISA.
RISC-V has gained popularity in recent years due to its flexibility, security, and scalability, making it an attractive choice for companies looking to develop AI solutions. The fact that Tenstorrent has secured a massive investment in its AI accelerator business underscores the growing recognition of RISC-V's potential in this field.
The new development also highlights the ongoing competition between various chip designers and manufacturers, who are vying for dominance in the emerging market for AI accelerators. Nvidia, which is widely recognized as a leader in the field of AI accelerators, has been facing significant challenges from rival companies like Tenstorrent.
In addition to its investment in RISC-V-based AI accelerators, Tenstorrent has also made use of SiFive's RISC-V cores in its own products. The company has championed RISC-V for AI accelerators and has developed Blackhole accelerators that feature a total of 768 RISC-V cores.
The involvement of various investors, including Samsung, AWF Partners, and Jeff Bezos's investment vehicle, underscores the growing recognition of Tenstorrent as a leader in the field of AI accelerators. This new funding round is expected to help Tenstorrent accelerate its plans for developing and commercializing its proprietary AI accelerators based on the RISC-V ISA.
Overall, the $693 million investment secured by Tenstorrent marks a significant milestone for the company and underscores the growing recognition of RISC-V's potential in the field of Artificial Intelligence. The development highlights the ongoing competition between various chip designers and manufacturers, who are vying for dominance in the emerging market for AI accelerators.
Related Information:
https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2024/12/04/riscv_ai_champion_investment/
Published: Wed Dec 4 00:01:52 2024 by llama3.2 3B Q4_K_M
