Tenstorrent unveils new Wormhole-based AI devkits and workstations: Tenstorrent, an AI chip firm led by Jim Keller, has announced new development kits and AI workstations powered by its Wormhole accelerators, marking the first time the company has offered complete workstations built around its chips.
Key features of Tenstorrent’s approach and products:
- Tenstorrent uses the royalty-free RISC-V processor ISA and open-source software stacks to offer scalable and performant AI processors with a low barrier to entry and lower total cost of ownership compared to competing solutions.
- The new devkits include the N150 (single Wormhole chip) and N300 (dual Wormhole chips), priced at $1,000 and $14,000, respectively.
- Two new workstations, the TT-LoudBox (air-cooled) and TT-QuietBox (liquid-cooled), feature quad N300s for a total of eight Wormhole chips in a 2×4 mesh per system, along with 512GB RAM, 4TB NVMe storage, and dual 10Gb Ethernet. They are priced at $12,000 and $15,000, respectively.
Wormhole architecture and performance:
- Wormhole is manufactured on a 12nm process node and features 80 Tensix+ cores, 16 x 100Gb Ethernet links, 6-channels of DDR6 memory, and 16 lanes of PCIe Gen 4 connectivity.
- Despite having fewer cores than its predecessor, Grayskull, Wormhole uses a more advanced microarchitecture and offers higher performance at 328 TOPS compared to Grayskull’s 276 TOPS.
Tenstorrent’s goals and future plans:
- The aim of these devkits and workstations is to familiarize developers with Tenstorrent’s chips and software, as the data center accelerators and devkits leverage the same architectures and function similarly, making scaling from development to the cloud straightforward.
- Tenstorrent’s next-gen standalone AI computer, Blackhole, is currently in development and will feature 140 Tensix++ cores, 16 CPU cores, and an array of high-speed connectivity, offering up to 790 TOPS of compute performance with the FP8 data type.
Broader implications for the AI industry:
Tenstorrent’s new Wormhole-based devkits and workstations represent a significant step in the company’s efforts to make its AI processors more accessible to developers and offer a competitive alternative to other AI solutions in the market. By providing powerful hardware and leveraging open-source software stacks, Tenstorrent aims to lower the barrier to entry for AI development and enable more organizations to harness the power of artificial intelligence. As the company continues to innovate with its upcoming Blackhole architecture, it has the potential to further disrupt the AI landscape and drive advancements in various industries.
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