OpenAI preps tape-out of custom AI processor, says report
Startup OpenAI, best known as the developer of the generative AI chatbot ChatGPT, will finish the design of an in-house chip for AI processing within a few months, according to Reuters.
The design will be sent to foundry TSMC for fabrication and this keeps OpenAI on course to hit volume production in 2026, the news agency said.
The development of a custom processor could reduce OpenAI’s dependence on Nvidia, the market leader in AI processors. The OpenAI processor in design is capable of both training and running AI models but will initially be deployed on a limited scale, the report said referencing unnamed sources.
It is not clear how much of the design will be done by OpenAI engineers, which is best known as a software company. Reuters said that the chip is being designed by an OpenAI in-house team led Richard Ho in collaboration with Broadcom. Ho’s team has doubled in size in recent months to 40 people.
A report from September 2024 in Taiwan’s Economic Daily News said that Broadcom and Marvell, were engineering a processor for OpenAI that would go into production first on TSMC’s 3nm manufacturing process before being made on the A16 process.
OpenAI joins Apple as a lead customer for TSMC’s A16 process, says report
Given the chiplet design style being adopted for advanced processors there is scope for all three companies to contribute to what ends up being single component mounted on PCBs and included in server racks.
OpenAI is not the first company to try and develop its own AI processor. Microsoft, Meta and Amazon have all attempted with mixed results. Nvidia, underpinned by its CUDA software development environment, retains a market share of about 80 percent.
However, the arrival of DeepSeek and its apparent use of a more efficient algorithmic approach to AI that requires less resources, along with the chance to create second-generation AI processors tuned to workloads is keeping up demand for R&D.
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OpenAI joins Apple as a lead customer for TSMC’s A16 process, says report
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