Google using custom chip called Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) to speed up machine learning tasks - The Tech Portal

Google has been working on a secret custom chip called Tensor Processing Unit for last several years to speed up various machine learning tasks. At the I/O developer conference 2016, Google CEO Sundar Pichai revealed this information and said that the company has been using the chip in various AI applications for last one year. The custom application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) chip has been running in Google data centre racks for past one year. It powers various applications at Google such as RankBrain (to improve the relevancy of search results in Google search), Google Street View( to improve quality and accuracy of maps and navigation) and the famed AlphaGo artificial intelligence (AI) powered Go player that beat top-ranked Go player Lee Sedol this year. In addition to it, voice recognition services and Cloud Machine Learning services of Google also run on Tensor Processing Unit chips.