Our eighth generation TPUs: two chips for the agentic era

· ai hardware · Source ↗

Article

TL;DR

Google’s TPU 8t delivers 121 ExaFlops per pod with 2PB shared HBM — 10x all top supercomputers combined.

Key Takeaways

  • Single TPU 8t pod = 121 ExaFlops; top 10 supercomputers total only 11,487 PetaFlops
  • Google owns full stack — silicon, software, data centers — structural cost advantage over NVidia renters
  • Gemini produces fewer tokens than rivals despite having most compute; reasoning depth unclear

Discussion

Top comments:

  • [TheMrZZ]: 9,600 chips + 2PB shared HBM per superpod is a genuine competitive moat
  • [pmb]: At scale, whole-datacenter design lets Google always be more cost-efficient than NVidia

    when you are doing big AI you basically have to buy it from NVidia or rent it from Google

  • [WarmWash]: Gemini uses drastically fewer tokens than ChatGPT/Claude — intentional budget constraint?
  • [jjice]: Owning your hardware and full stack is huge; Google clowned on early but positioned well

Discuss on HN