Broadcom and OpenAI Announce a 10GW XPU Deal
Here is the excerpt from the deal press release:
OpenAI and Broadcom today announced a collaboration for 10 gigawatts of custom AI accelerators. OpenAI will design the accelerators and systems, which will be developed and deployed in partnership with Broadcom. By designing its own chips and systems, OpenAI can embed what it’s learned from developing frontier models and products directly into the hardware, unlocking new levels of capability and intelligence. The racks, scaled entirely with Ethernet and other connectivity solutions from Broadcom, will meet surging global demand for AI, with deployments across OpenAI’s facilities and partner data centers.
OpenAI and Broadcom have long-standing agreements on the co-development and supply of the AI accelerators. The two companies have signed a term sheet to deploy racks incorporating the AI accelerators and Broadcom networking solutions. (Source: OpenAI)
Broadcom has been huge in the custom accelerator business, and here we see OpenAI using Broadcom for its custom accelerators. It is also using Broadcom’s scale out and scale-up Ethernet portfolio.
Also, “The racks include Broadcom’s end-to-end portfolio of Ethernet, PCIe and optical connectivity solutions.” (Source: Broadcom)
One has to wonder if the PCIe involves retimers and switches and if the optical involves co-packaged optics. With the new Broadcom Tomahawk 6 Davisson 102.4T Switch with Co-Packaged Optics Shipping it is clear that Broadcom is taking steps in that direction.
Final Words
This is another huge deal, but it seems substantially different than the NVIDIA and AMD deals in a number of ways. One also has to take a pause and wonder who is providing the networking for the AMD deal since AMD has relied upon Broadcom networking and PCIe solutions in the past. It may be that Broadcom is getting a lot in the latest set of OpenAI deals.
Next we will see OpenAI buy nuclear reactors with all the power these deals will need.