Ironwood

Google has launched its seventh-generation Tensor Processing Unit (TPU), Ironwood, now generally available to cloud customers. This custom-designed AI accelerator aims to rival Nvidia GPUs by offering specialized, high-performance computing power for AI workloads like training LLMs and real-time inference. Ironwood boasts interconnectivity of up to 9,216 TPUs in a single pod. AI startup Anthropic has pledged to utilize up to 1 million Ironwood TPUs. The move underscores Google’s commitment to AI infrastructure amid growing cloud revenue and increased capital expenditure.