OpenAI in Talks with Broadcom About Developing Custom AI Chips to Power Next Generation Models

[AleksandarK]

According to The Information, OpenAI is reportedly in talks with Broadcom about developing a custom AI accelerator to power OpenAI's growing demand for high-performance solutions. Broadcom is a fabless chip designer known for a wide range of silicon solutions spanning from networking, PCIe, SSD controllers, and PHYs all the way up to custom ASICs. The latter part is what OpenAI wants to focus on, but all the aforementioned IP developed by Broadcom is of use in a data center. Suppose OpenAI decides to use Broadcom's solutions. In that case, the fabless silicon designer offers a complete vertical stack of products for inter-system communication using various protocols such as PCIe, system-to-system communication using Ethernet networking with Broadcom Tomahawk 6 and future revisions, alongside storage solutions and many other complimentary elements of a data center.

As a company skilled in making various IPs, it also makes ASIC solutions for other companies and has assisted Google in the making of its Tensor Processing Unit (TPU), which is now in its sixth generation. Google TPUs are massively successful as Google deploys millions of them and provides AI solutions to billions of users across the globe. Now, OpenAI wants to be part of the AI chip game, and Broadcom could come to the rescue with its already-established AI success and various other data center componentry to help make a custom AI accelerator to power OpenAI's infrastructure needed for the next generation of AI models. With each new AI model released by OpenAI, compute demand spikes by several orders of magnitude, and having an AI accelerator that exactly matches their need will help the company move faster and run even bigger AI models.



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[64K]

I wholeheartedly cheer on any company that will find solutions to meet the AI craze that don't devastate the GPU market for gamers. We had enough of that abuse from the mining craze and this AI craze promises to be much larger. I miss the days when GPU meant Graphics Processing Unit.

 

[thesmokingman]

He needs to fix that swamp that costed him 27 million lol.

 

[darakian]

Curious that they're not working with microsoft given the maia chip they have

 

[Minus Infinity]

OMG OpenAI and Broadcom, what could possibly go wrong for consumers.