A startup hopes to challenge Nvidia, AMD, and Intel with a chip that wrangles probabilities rather than ones and zeros. Extropic claims its exotic new chip, called XTR-0, could be thousands of times more energy efficient than existing chips when scaled up. Extropic, a startup developing an exotic new kind of computer chip that handles probabilistic bits, has produced its first working hardware along with proof that more advanced systems will tackle useful tasks in artificial intelligence and scientific research. The startup's chips work in a fundamentally different way to chips from Nvidia, AMD, and others, and promise to be thousands of times more energy efficient when scaled up. With AI companies pouring billions of dollars into building datacenters, a completely new approach could offer a far less costly alternative to vast arrays of conventional chips.

Extropic is not a normal startup. But then, these are hardly normal times. The company is developing a radical new kind of computer chip that harnesses the thermodynamic fluctuations that naturally occur within electronic circuits--and which are normally a headache for engineers--using them to perform highly efficient calculations with probabilities. This chip might well find some takers as AI giants search for ever more computer power to build AI models that perform artificial reasoning, and as we all worry about AI's incredible energy demands. Extropic has now shared more details of its probabilistic hardware with WIRED, as well as results that show it is on track to build something that could indeed offer an alternative to conventional silicon in many datacenters.

The cost of making further progress in artificial intelligence is becoming as startling as a hallucination by ChatGPT. Demand for the graphics chips known as GPUs needed for large-scale AI training has driven prices of the crucial components through the roof. OpenAI has said that training the algorithm that now powers ChatGPT cost the firm over 100 million. The race to compete in AI also means that data centers are now consuming worrying amounts of energy. The AI gold rush has a few startups hatching bold plans to create new computational shovels to sell.