Google's new TPU custom chip is their biggest hardware push into machine learning yet

However, Google too seems to acknowledge, "great software shines brightest with great hardware underneath". The aim, the search giant says, was to see what they could accomplish with custom accelerators for machine learning applications. The TensorFlow-tailored TPU, which has been running inside the firm's data centers for more than a year now, delivered "an order of magnitude better-optimized performance per watt for machine learning". If that doesn't sound impressive, to put that in perspective Google said that the improvement is roughly equivalent to a technology fast-forwarding an approximate seven years into the future, or three generations of Moore's Law. Ultimately, it all comes down to crazy optimization.