Cerebras Doubles AI Performance with Second-Gen 7nm Wafer Scale Engine

Nearly two years since its massive 1.2 trillion transistor Wafer Scale Engine chip debuted at Hot Chips, Cerebras Systems is announcing its second-generation technology (WSE-2), which its says packs twice the performance into the same 8″x8″ silicon footprint. "We're going bigger, faster and better in a more power efficient footprint," Cerebras Founder and CTO Andrew Feldman told HPCwire ahead of today's launch. With 2.6 trillion transistors and 850,000 cores, the WSE-2 more than doubles the elements on the first-gen chip (1.2 trillion transistors, 400,000 cores). The new chip, made by TSMC on its 7nm node, delivers 40 GB of on-chip SRAM memory, 20 petabytes of memory bandwidth and 220 petabits of aggregate fabric bandwidth. Gen over gen, the WSE-2 provides about 2.3X on all major performance metrics, said Feldman.