Cerebras System unveiled the world's largest processor last year. Its dimensions were 220 x 220 mm, area - 46 225 mm². The processor includes 1.2 trillion transistors. The chip was named WSE (Wafer Scale Engine). The company representatives also developed the CS-1 computer, which was based on a giant processor. The system was officially presented on November 18, 2019.
Now Cerebras System has told about a new processor, the number of transistors in which will more than double - from 1.2 trillion to 2.6 trillion. A sharp increase in the number of elements in a chip became possible due to the transition to a 7-nm technical process. The number of cores has also grown exponentially - there are now 850,000 of them.
The dimensions of the first processor are huge - 22 x 22 cm, which is comparable to the size of a small laptop. It is 55.9 times larger than the largest GPU chip, the Nvidia A100. Well, CS-1 was named by the manufacturer as "the fastest computer for working with artificial intelligence and training neural networks." Cooling - liquid with an internal circuit and two pumps. Additionally, four large coolers are installed, providing an air flow rate of 0.95 m 3 / s.
The first generation processor included 400,000 cores. It was equipped with 18 GB of SRAM, and the throughput reached 9 petabytes per second. The system consumed 18 kW of power supplied by 12 power supplies. The weight of the computer with the WSE installed is 254 kilograms. To integrate the system into a single network infrastructure, 12 ports of 100 Gigabit Ethernet (100GBase-SR4) were used.
Wafer Scale Engine complete with power and cooling system
Cerebras Systems CEO and co-founder Andrew Feldman said at the presentation of the novelty that CS-1 is three times more productive than TPU clusters from Google. Computing solutions from the search giant in terms of energy performance turned out to be worse than the company's development, consuming more than 100 kW of electricity.
In 2019, the first copies of the CS-1 were delivered to customers. Among them are the US Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory, the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center and Livermore National Laboratory.
At the Hot Chips 2020 conference, Cerebras System announced that it will move from 16nm to 7nm process technology. Taiwan's Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) will remain the processor manufacturer. The developer's representative said that several samples of the new generation WSE are being tested in the laboratory.
The Cerebras System is expected to increase the amount of available chip memory and strengthen chip interconnects for increased throughput. Most likely, the company will continue to lease computing power for training neural networks for corporate clients. Who will become the client will become clear in the near future, but you can be sure that there will be many who wish.