Google announced two specialized TPUs coming next year, reports Slashdot via Quartz and Bloomberg:
- TPU 8tx: pairs with an AMD CPU and encrypts data at the chip level for confidential computing. It’s aimed at the public sector and regulated businesses that can’t have data sitting decrypted in memory.
- TPU 8i Max: two TPU chips in one package for more compute and memory, built for long-context work like drug discovery, math and coding.
Both are reworked versions of existing silicon, not new designs. Google says every TPU it has is already committed to customers. Its chip team used to ship one processor every two years.
My take
Confidential computing at the accelerator is the part I care about. If your data stays encrypted while the model works on it, a lot of “we can’t put that in the cloud” conversations change. More real competition for Nvidia is good for everyone’s prices too.
God Bless, and Happy hacking!
