Toronto-based Tenstorrent Partners with Samsung to Build State-of-the-Art AI Chips, Canada

Toronto-based chip designer Tenstorrent has partnered with Samsung to develop state-of-the-art AI chips. Samsung’s Foundry Design Service team will utilize its new SF4X process to manufacture the chips, as well as Tenstorrent’s central processing units (CPUs). Both product categories will be based on Tenstorrent’s new RISC-V chip design. By collaborating with Samsung, Tenstorrent aims to leverage the expertise of the electronics manufacturing giant to bring its chips to market. Samsung’s US business has the capability to produce chips using a four-nanometer (4nm) process, which is considered to be close to state-of-the-art. Moreover, the company’s new Austin facility will eventually be able to manufacture three-nanometer (3nm) chips, offering even more power efficiency. However, mass manufacturing of three-nanometer chips is not expected to begin until 2024, giving Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) a potential advantage. The use of AI in semiconductor design has become increasingly significant, with companies like Tenstorrent, Nvidia, and Graphcore investing heavily in optimizing semiconductors for AI processing. Tenstorrent employs the open-source RISC-V instruction set to enhance calculations for AI, while Graphcore has developed a multi-stream data processing chip, and Nvidia has software tools for customizing its Graphics Processing Units for AI workloads. The global battle for semiconductor supremacy has intensified with the rise of AI, as advancements in large language models heavily rely on semiconductor capabilities.