Google Unveils Ironwood, Its Latest AI Accelerator Chip

Google has unveiled Ironwood, its seventh-generation Tensor Processing Unit (TPU), designed to significantly enhance the performance and efficiency of artificial intelligence (AI) applications, particularly in inference tasks. Ironwood represents a major advancement in Google's decade-long effort to develop alternatives to Nvidia's dominant AI processors.

Engineered for scalability, Ironwood chips can operate in clusters ranging from 256 to 9,216 chips, delivering up to 42.5 exaflops of computing power. This configuration offers more than 24 times the computational capacity of the world's fastest supercomputer, El Capitan, which has 1.7 exaflops. Additionally, Ironwood boasts twice the energy efficiency of its predecessor, the Trillium model, making it a more sustainable option for AI operations.

Ironwood is specifically optimized for inference computing—the process of executing AI models to generate real-time responses, such as those required by chatbots. This focus aligns with the growing importance of inference in AI applications, as models increasingly provide proactive insights and interpretations. By integrating enhanced memory and performance features, Ironwood is well-suited to support sophisticated AI models like Google's Gemini.