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Google has unveiled its seventh-generation Tensor Processing Unit (TPU), named "Ironwood," marking a significant advancement in AI accelerator technology. Designed specifically for AI inference workloads, Ironwood is Google's most performant and scalable custom AI accelerator to date. This launch is part of Google Cloud's strategy to lead in supplying AI models, applications, and infrastructure, capitalizing on its own substantial AI needs to drive homegrown infrastructure development. Google Cloud is positioning itself for the "agentic AI era," with Ironwood playing a pivotal role in enabling multiple AI systems to work together across platforms.

Google's Ironwood TPU comes in configurations of up to 9,216 liquid-cooled chips interconnected via Inter-Chip Interconnect (ICI) networking, spanning nearly 10 MW. The architecture of the Ironwood TPU is designed to optimize hardware and software for AI workloads, allowing developers to leverage Google's Pathways software stack to harness tens of thousands of Ironwood TPUs. The chip design philosophy shift is from models that provide real-time information for interpretation, to models that proactively generate insights and interpretations, which Google calls the "age of inference."

Ironwood is designed to manage the computational and communication demands of "thinking models" like large language models and advanced reasoning tasks. A configuration with 9,216 chips per pod can support more than 24 times the compute power of the world’s no. 1 supercomputer, El Capitan. NVIDIA is collaborating with Google Cloud to bring agentic AI to enterprises seeking to locally harness the Google Gemini family of AI models using the NVIDIA Blackwell HGX and DGX platforms and NVIDIA Confidential Computing for data safety. This collaboration enables enterprises to innovate securely while maintaining data privacy.

ImgSrc: insideainews.co

References :

• insidehpc.com: Google Cloud today introduced its seventh-generation Tensor Processing Unit, "Ironwood," which the company said is it most performant and scalable custom AI accelerator and the first designed specifically for inference.
• www.bigdatawire.com: Google Cloud Preps for Agentic AI Era with ‘Ironwood’ TPU, New Models and Software
• www.nextplatform.com: With “Ironwood†TPU, Google Pushes The AI Accelerator To The Floor
• insideAI News: Google today introduced its seventh-generation Tensor Processing Unit, “Ironwood,†which the company said is it most performant and scalable custom AI accelerator and the first designed specifically for inference.
• venturebeat.com: Google’s new Ironwood chip is 24x more powerful than the world’s fastest supercomputer
• BigDATAwire: Google Cloud Preps for Agentic AI Era with ‘Ironwood’ TPU, New Models and Software
• insidehpc.com: Google Cloud today introduced its seventh-generation Tensor Processing Unit, "Ironwood," which the company said is it most performant and scalable custom AI accelerator and the first designed specifically for inference.
• the-decoder.com: Google unveils new AI models, infrastructure, and agent protocol at Cloud Next
• AI News | VentureBeat: Google’s new Agent Development Kit lets enterprises rapidly prototype and deploy AI agents without recoding
• Compute: Introducing Ironwood TPUs and new innovations in AI Hypercomputer
• The Next Platform: With “Ironwood†TPU, Google Pushes The AI Accelerator To The Floor
• venturebeat.com: Google unveils Ironwood TPUs, Gemini 2.5 "thinking models," and Agent2Agent protocol at Cloud Next '25, challenging Microsoft and Amazon with a comprehensive AI strategy that enables multiple AI systems to work together across platforms.
• Ken Yeung: Google Pushes Agent Interoperability With New Dev Kit and Agent2Agent Standard
• The Tech Basic: Details Google Cloud's New AI Chip.
• insideAI News: Google today introduced its seventh-generation Tensor Processing Unit, "Ironwood," which the company said is it most performant and scalable custom AI accelerator and the first designed specifically for inference.
• www.marktechpost.com: Google AI Introduces Ironwood: A Google TPU Purpose-Built for the Age of Inference
• cloud.google.com: Introducing Ironwood TPUs and new innovations in AI Hypercomputer
• Kyle Wiggers ?: Ironwood is Google’s newest AI accelerator chip

Classification:

• HashTags: #AIInference #GoogleTPU #AgenticAI
• Company: Google
• Target: AI Workloads
• Product: Ironwood TPU
• Feature: AI Inference
• Type: AI
• Severity: Informative