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Cerebras: Wafer-sized processor has 850,000 cores

Cerebras has announced the Wafer Scale Engine 2, a processor designed for artificial intelligence. As with the first generation, it is a gigantic, square chip, of which only one can be pulled per 300 mm wafer.

Stellenmarkt

  1. Haufe Group, Freiburg im Breisgau
  2. CureVac AG, Tübingen near Stuttgart

While the Wafer Scale Engine 1 had 400,000 AI cores at 46,225 mm² and 1.2 billion transistors in the 16 nm process, the Wafer Scale Engine 2 is even more gigantic: The area remains the same thanks to TSMC’s 7 nm technology but 2.6 billion transistors can be accommodated for 850,000 cores.

Usually, dozens to hundreds of chips are exposed per wafer and separated in a later work step, followed by packaging. The Wafer Scale Engine, on the other hand, is a monolithic processor despite its absurd dimensions. Because there are so many identical cores, the yield in the event of defects is a comparatively minor problem.

  •   Wafer Scale Engine 2 (Bild: Cerebras)
  •   Wafer Scale Engine 2 (Bild: Cerebras)

Wafer Scale Engine 2 (Bild: Cerebras)

It was a bigger challenge to connect the individual cores with each other using a 2D mesh. In addition, silicon expands when it is hot, which is why classic packaging techniques do not work and a special connector had to be developed anyway due to the wafer-like dimensions. The chips are suitable for Tensorflow and Pytorch, among others.

Cerebras sells the first wafer scale engine as a CS-1is the name of the water-cooled 15U system with a maximum power consumption of 20 kilowatts and twelve redundant power supplies. The previous customers include that Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center for the neocortex supercomputer and that Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for the Lassen supercomputer.

The latter is a so-called unclassified system of the Sierra supercomputer, which is subordinate to the United States Department of Energy. The Sierra poses after the also US Summit the third fastest listed supercomputer in the world, the front runner is currently the Fugaku in Japan.

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