OpenAI unveils its first custom chip, built by Broadcom

kilroy123

I hope to see something like this, but in a small form factor like the NVIDIA spark. I want a super fast LLM that is Opus 4.6+, like, in ability.

fibonacci112358

So this is where all the memory they bought is going to.

shellcromancer

Probably obvious but still omitted in the OpenAI post: chips are being made by TSMC [1]. Wasn't sure if Intel got it. 1. https://www.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/openai-unve...

maz1b

Pretty huge move. Google and their TPUs are looking infinitely more prescient as I think they are on their 7th generation, along with the offshoots it inspired like the LPU and even others, perhaps like Cerebras and their Wafer Scale Engine. However, based off first impressions, it seems like this is meant for inference side, and not training, which is also an interesting choice.

jerojero

One thing I don't like about California based companies is how cringe the names always are. "Jalapeño" is such a bad name, having an "ñ" already makes it difficult and annoying to deal with in so many little ways. Good luck with that. But also, theres the sort of "yes lets use Mexican related things because we're California" thought that I just really hate. I don't know, its like corporate Memphis to me. You see a product like this, you know it's an uppity califonia based firm that came up with it.

dadoum

> May we scale smoothly, exponentially and uneventfully through A[SI] That sentence sounds weird to me. I can't really put my finger on why, maybe the combination of adverbs, or just the fact of writing the desire of scaling as a company so directly. It feels (to me) like openly claiming their selfish goals. Or maybe I am just misinterpreting and they are referring to the whole humanity as "We" (but knowing Broadcom and in a lesser extent OpenAI doings, I am not convinced).

qsxfthnkp2322

aw shucks nvda has some spicy competition Make sure you all use that fancy ñ

Legend2440

The only surprising thing about this is that they didn't do it three years ago.

satvikpendem

I'm assuming they used LLMs to (help humans) do custom circuit design. Even pre LLM there were various computer optimizations that didn't require humans like genetic algorithms. It'd be cool to see a paper on how they did it.

jabedude

how much does this chip help with inference speed?

gravypod

I wonder how close OpenAI is getting to using the memory they purchased. Are they planning to stack a huge amount of HBM2 into these chips?

v5v3

>designed for initial deployment by the end of 2026 and expanding in the years ahead, So after the IPO and will be featured heavily in the IPO sales brochure as a future promise? I'm sceptical over any pre-IPO announcements.

fennecbutt

I mean I'd love to be able to buy something like the 17k tps taalas chip as a pcie or m.2. Imagine when we can roar along at that speed, low power. Can just have the model reason for a while about anything and everything. It reminds me of the "race to idle" for mcus etc.

theowaway213456

This seems like more competition for Cerebras? Am I understanding correctly?

digitaltrees

We’ve entered the “if you care about software, build hardware” phase of AI

Mistletoe

The similarities between the AI world and the crypto world are so much closer than any AI fanboy would ever admit.

flyinglizard

I call BS. It’s probably a white label around existing Broadcom IP, impossible to go from zero to this kind of chip in nine months. I doubt OpenAI had any significant contribution.

bogdiyan

I am not sure how much of the work is done by OpenAI, or whether it is basically a Broadcom chip specifically built for OpenAI models. It is a necessary step, but building a high-performance chip is not easy. Look at companies like Groq, Amazon, and Google.

renoir

Look at the SIZE of that chip. Cerebras stock is down nearly 20% today. Not only is approach overlapping, OpenAI is also Cerebras's only major customer.

duendefm

If this is something that will hurt Nvidia, I'm all for it