Google's Tensor Processing Unit: 15-month 2013 crash project to avoid doubling datacenter capacity evolves into 9,216-chip Ironwood system producing 42.5 Exaflops, proving specialized AI hardware beats general-purpose chips as Moore's Law slows.

Touching the Elephant - TPUs

Understanding the Tensor Processing UnitReed December 1, 2025Something NewThere is mythological reverence for Google’s Tensor Processing Unit. While the world presently watches NVIDIA’s gravity drag more companies into its orbit, there sits Google, imperial and singular. Lots of companies participate in the “Cambrian-style explosion of new-interesting accelerators”[14] – Groq, Amazon, and Tenstorrent come to mind – but the TPU is the original existence proof. NVIDIA should take credit for the re...