Tenstorrent Launches Wormhole AI Processors: 466 FP8 TFLOPS at 300W
Tenstorrent has unveiled its next-generation Wormhole processor for AI workloads that promises to offer decent performance at a low price. The company currently offers two add-on PCIe cards carrying one or two Wormhole processors as well as TT-LoudBox, and TT-QuietBox workstations aimed at software developers. The whole of today's release is aimed at developers rather than those who will deploy the Wormhole boards for their commercial workloads.
“It is always rewarding to get more of our products into developer hands. Releasing development systems with our Wormhole™ card helps developers scale up and work on multi-chip AI software.” said Jim Keller, CEO of Tenstorrent. “In addition to this launch, we are excited that the tape-out and power-on for our second generation, Blackhole, is going very well.”
Each Wormhole processor packs 72 Tensix cores (featuring five RISC-V cores supporting various data formats) with 108 MB of SRAM to deliver 262 FP8 TFLOPS at 1 GHz at 160W thermal design power. A single-chip Wormhole n150 card carries 12 GB of GDDR6 memory featuring a 288 GB/s bandwidth.
Wormhole processors offer flexible scalability to meet the varying needs of workloads. In a standard workstation setup with four Wormhole n300 cards, the processors can merge to function as a single unit, appearing as a unified, extensive network of Tensix cores to the software. This configuration allows the accelerators to either work on the same workload, be divided among four developers or run up to eight distinct AI models simultaneously. A crucial feature of this scalability is that it operates natively without the need for virtualization. In data center environments, Wormhole processors will scale both inside one machine using PCIe or outside of a single machine using Ethernet.
From performance standpoint, Tenstorrent's single-chip Wormhole n150 card (72 Tensix cores at 1 GHz, 108 MB SRAM, 12 GB GDDR6 at 288 GB/s) is capable of 262 FP8 TFLOPS at 160W, whereas the dual-chip Wormhole n300 board (128 Tensix cores at 1 GHz, 192 MB SRAM, aggregated 24 GB GDDR6 at 576 GB/s) can offer up to 466 FP8 TFLOPS at 300W (according to Tom's Hardware).
To put that 466 FP8 TFLOPS at 300W number into context, let's compare it to what AI market leader Nvidia has to offer at this thermal design power. Nvidia's A100 does not support FP8, but it does support INT8 and its peak performance is 624 TOPS (1,248 TOPS with sparsity). By contrast, Nvidia's H100 supports FP8 and its peak performance is massive 1,670 TFLOPS (3,341 TFLOPS with sparsity) at 300W, which is a big difference from Tenstorrent's Wormhole n300.
There is a big catch though. Tenstorrent's Wormhole n150 is offered for $999, whereas n300 is available for $1,399. By contrast, one Nvidia H100 card can retail for $30,000, depending on quantities. Of course, we do not know whether four or eight Wormhole processors can indeed deliver the performance of a single H300, though they will do so at 600W or 1200W TDP, respectively.
In addition to cards, Tenstorrent offers developers pre-built workstations with four n300 cards inside the less expensive Xeon-based TT-LoudBox with active cooling and a premium EPYC-powered TT-QuietBox with liquid cooling.
Sources: Tenstorrent, Tom's Hardware
AI
Posted by The Techinical Support
In Light of Stability Concerns, Intel Issues Request to Motherboards Vendors to Actually Follow Stock Power Settings Across the internet, from online forums such as Reddit to various other tech media outlets, there's a lot of furor around reports of Intel's top-end 14th and 13th Gen K series of processors running into stability issues. As Intel's flagship chips, these parts come aggressively clocked in order to maximize performance through various implementations of boost and turbo, leaving them running close to their limits out of the box. But with high-end motherboards further goosing these chips to wring even more performance out of them, it would seem that the Intel desktop ecosystem has finally reached a tipping point where all of these efforts to boost performance have pushed these flagship chips to unstable conditions. To that end, Intel has released new gudiance to its consumer motherboard partners, strongly encouraging them to actually implment Intel's stock power settings, and to use those baseline settings as their out-of-the-box default.
While the underlying conditions are nothing new – we've published stories time and time again about motherboard features such as multi-core enhancement (MCE) and raised power consumption limits that seek to maximize how hard and how long systems are able to turbo boost – the issue has finally come to a head in the last couple of months thanks to accumulating reports of system instability with Intel's 13900K and 14900K processors. These instability problems are eventually solved by either tamping down on these motherboard performance-boosting features – bringing the chips back down to something closer to Intel's official operating parameters – or downclocking the chips entirely.
Intel first began publicly investigating the matter on the 27th of February, when Intel's Communications Manager, Thomas Hannaford, posted a thread on Intel's Community Product Support Forms titled "Regarding Reports of 13th/14th Gen Unlocked Desktop Users Experiencing Stability Issues". In this thread, Thomas Hannaford said, "Intel is aware of reports regarding Intel Core 13th and 14th Gen unlocked desktop processors experiencing issues with certain workloads. We're engaged with our partners and are conducting analysis of the reported issues. If you are experiencing these issues, please reach out to Intel Customer Support for further assistance in the interim."
Since that post went up, additional reports have been circulating about instability issues across various online forums and message boards. The underlying culprit has been theorized to be motherboards implementing an array of strategies to improve chip performance, including aggressive multi-core enhancement settings, "unlimited" PL2 turbo, and reduced load line calibration settings. At no point do any of these settings overclock a CPU and push it to a higher clockspeed than it's validated for, but these settings do everything possible to keep a chip at the highest clockspeed possible at all times – and in the process seem to have gone a step too far.
From "Why Intel Processors Draw More Power Than Expected: TDP and Turbo Explained"
We wrote a piece initially covering multi-core enhancement in 2012, detailing how motherboard manufacturers try to stay competitive with each other and leverage any headroom within the silicon to output the highest performance levels. And more recently, we've talked about how desktop systems with Intel chips are now regularly exceeding their rated TDPs – sometimes by extreme amounts – as motherboard vendors continue to push them to run as hard as possible for the best performance.
But things have changed since 2012. At the time, this wasn't so much of an issue, as overclocking was actually very favorable to increasing the performance of processors. But in 2024 with chips such as the Intel Core i9-14900K, we have CPUs shipping with a maximum turbo clock speed of 6.0 GHz and a peak power consumption of over 400 Watts, figures that were only a pipe dream a decade ago.
Jumping to the present time, over the weekend Intel released a statement about the matter to its partners, outlining their investigation so far and their sug... CPUs
From "Why Intel Processors Draw More Power Than Expected: TDP and Turbo Explained"
Samsung's 128 TB-Class BM1743 Enterprise SSD Displayed at FMS 2024 
Samsung had quietly launched its BM1743 enterprise QLC SSD last month with a hefty 61.44 TB SKU. At FMS 2024, the company had the even larger 122.88 TB version of that SSD on display, alongside a few recorded benchmarking sessions. Compared to the previous generation, the BM1743 comes with a 4.1x improvement in I/O performance, improvement in data retention, and a 45% improvement in power efficiency for sequential writes.
The 128 TB-class QLC SSD boasts of sequential read speeds of 7.5 GBps and write speeds of 3 GBps. Random reads come in at 1.6 M IOPS, while 16 KB random writes clock in at 45K IOPS. Based on the quoted random write access granularity, it appears that Samsung is using a 16 KB indirection unit (IU) to optimize flash management. This is similar to the strategy adopted by Solidigm with IUs larger than 4K in their high-capacity SSDs.
A recorded benchmark session on the company's PM9D3a 8-channel Gen 5 SSD was also on display.
The SSD family is being promoted as a mainstream option for datacenters, and boasts of sequential reads up to 12 GBps and writes up to 6.8 GBps. Random reads clock in at 2 M IOPS, and random writes at 400 K IOPS.
Available in multiple form-factors up to 32 TB (M.2 tops out at 2 TB), the drive's firmware includes optional support for flexible data placement (FDP) to help address the write amplification aspect.
The PM1753 is the current enterprise SSD flagship in Samsung's lineup. With support for 16 NAND channels and capacities up to 32 TB, this U.2 / E3.S SSD has advertised sequential read and write speeds of 14.8 GBps and 11 GBps respectively. Random reads and writes for 4 KB accesses are listed at 3.4 M and 600 K IOPS.
Samsung claims a 1.7x performance improvement and a 1.7x power efficiency improvement over the previous generation (PM1743), making this TLC SSD suitable for AI servers.
The 9th Gen. V-NAND wafer was also available for viewing, though photography was prohibited. Mass production of this flash memory began in April 2024.
Storage
ASMedia Preps USB4 v2 Controller and PHY 
The USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) introduced USB4 version 2.0 in fall 2022, and it expects systems and devices with the tech to emerge later this year and into next year. These upcoming products will largely rely on Intel's Barlow Ridge controller, a full-featured Thunderbolt 5 controller that goes above and beond the baseline USB4 v2 spec. And though extremely capable, Intel's Thunderbolt controllers are also quite expensive, and Barlow Ridge isn't expected to be any different. Fortunately, for system and device vendors that just need a basic USB4 v2 solution, ASMedia is also working on its own USB4 v2 controller.
At Computex 2024, ASMedia demonstrated a prototype of its upcoming USB4 v2 physical interface (PHY), which will support USB4 v2's new Gen 4 (160Gbps) data rates and the associated PAM-3 signal encoding. The prototype was implemented using an FPGA, as the company yet has to tape out the completed controller.
Ultimately, the purpose of showing off a FPGA-based PHY at Computex was to allow ASMedia to demonstrate their current PHY design. With the shift to PAM-3 encoding for USB4 v2, ASMedia (and the rest of the USB ecosystem) must develop significantly more complex controllers – and there's no part of that more critical than a solid and reliable PHY design.
As part of their demonstration, ASMedia had a classic eye diagram display. The eye diagram demoed has a clear opening in the center, which is indicative of good signal integrity, as the larger the eye opening, the less distortion and noise in the signal. The horizontal width of the eye opening represents the time window in which the signal can be sampled correctly, so the relatively narrow horizontal spread of the eye opening suggests that there is minimal jitter, meaning the signal transitions are consistent and predictable. Finally, the vertical height of the eye opening indicates the signal amplitude and the rather tall eye opening suggests a higher signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), meaning that the signal is strong compared to any noise present.
ASMedia itself is one of the major suppliers for discrete USB controllers, so the availability of ASMedia's USB4 v2 chip is crucial for adoption of the standard in general. While Intel will spearhead the industry with their Barlow Ridge Thunderbolt 5/USB4 v2 controller, ASMedia's controller is poised to end up in a far larger range of devices. So the importance of the company's USB4 v2 PHY demo is hard to overstate.
Demos aside, ASMedia is hoping to tape the chip out soon. If all goes well, the company expects their first USB4 v2 controllers to hit the market some time in the second half of 2025.
Peripherals
In Light of Stability Concerns, Intel Issues Request to Motherboards Vendors to Actually Follow Stock Power Settings Across the internet, from online forums such as Reddit to various other tech media outlets, there's a lot of furor around reports of Intel's top-end 14th and 13th Gen K series of processors running into stability issues. As Intel's flagship chips, these parts come aggressively clocked in order to maximize performance through various implementations of boost and turbo, leaving them running close to their limits out of the box. But with high-end motherboards further goosing these chips to wring even more performance out of them, it would seem that the Intel desktop ecosystem has finally reached a tipping point where all of these efforts to boost performance have pushed these flagship chips to unstable conditions. To that end, Intel has released new gudiance to its consumer motherboard partners, strongly encouraging them to actually implment Intel's stock power settings, and to use those baseline settings as their out-of-the-box default.
While the underlying conditions are nothing new – we've published stories time and time again about motherboard features such as multi-core enhancement (MCE) and raised power consumption limits that seek to maximize how hard and how long systems are able to turbo boost – the issue has finally come to a head in the last couple of months thanks to accumulating reports of system instability with Intel's 13900K and 14900K processors. These instability problems are eventually solved by either tamping down on these motherboard performance-boosting features – bringing the chips back down to something closer to Intel's official operating parameters – or downclocking the chips entirely.
Intel first began publicly investigating the matter on the 27th of February, when Intel's Communications Manager, Thomas Hannaford, posted a thread on Intel's Community Product Support Forms titled "Regarding Reports of 13th/14th Gen Unlocked Desktop Users Experiencing Stability Issues". In this thread, Thomas Hannaford said, "Intel is aware of reports regarding Intel Core 13th and 14th Gen unlocked desktop processors experiencing issues with certain workloads. We're engaged with our partners and are conducting analysis of the reported issues. If you are experiencing these issues, please reach out to Intel Customer Support for further assistance in the interim."
Since that post went up, additional reports have been circulating about instability issues across various online forums and message boards. The underlying culprit has been theorized to be motherboards implementing an array of strategies to improve chip performance, including aggressive multi-core enhancement settings, "unlimited" PL2 turbo, and reduced load line calibration settings. At no point do any of these settings overclock a CPU and push it to a higher clockspeed than it's validated for, but these settings do everything possible to keep a chip at the highest clockspeed possible at all times – and in the process seem to have gone a step too far.
From "Why Intel Processors Draw More Power Than Expected: TDP and Turbo Explained"
We wrote a piece initially covering multi-core enhancement in 2012, detailing how motherboard manufacturers try to stay competitive with each other and leverage any headroom within the silicon to output the highest performance levels. And more recently, we've talked about how desktop systems with Intel chips are now regularly exceeding their rated TDPs – sometimes by extreme amounts – as motherboard vendors continue to push them to run as hard as possible for the best performance.
But things have changed since 2012. At the time, this wasn't so much of an issue, as overclocking was actually very favorable to increasing the performance of processors. But in 2024 with chips such as the Intel Core i9-14900K, we have CPUs shipping with a maximum turbo clock speed of 6.0 GHz and a peak power consumption of over 400 Watts, figures that were only a pipe dream a decade ago.
Jumping to the present time, over the weekend Intel released a statement about the matter to its partners, outlining their investigation so far and their sug... CPUs
From "Why Intel Processors Draw More Power Than Expected: TDP and Turbo Explained"
Samsung's 128 TB-Class BM1743 Enterprise SSD Displayed at FMS 2024
Samsung had quietly launched its BM1743 enterprise QLC SSD last month with a hefty 61.44 TB SKU. At FMS 2024, the company had the even larger 122.88 TB version of that SSD on display, alongside a few recorded benchmarking sessions. Compared to the previous generation, the BM1743 comes with a 4.1x improvement in I/O performance, improvement in data retention, and a 45% improvement in power efficiency for sequential writes.
The 128 TB-class QLC SSD boasts of sequential read speeds of 7.5 GBps and write speeds of 3 GBps. Random reads come in at 1.6 M IOPS, while 16 KB random writes clock in at 45K IOPS. Based on the quoted random write access granularity, it appears that Samsung is using a 16 KB indirection unit (IU) to optimize flash management. This is similar to the strategy adopted by Solidigm with IUs larger than 4K in their high-capacity SSDs.
A recorded benchmark session on the company's PM9D3a 8-channel Gen 5 SSD was also on display.
The SSD family is being promoted as a mainstream option for datacenters, and boasts of sequential reads up to 12 GBps and writes up to 6.8 GBps. Random reads clock in at 2 M IOPS, and random writes at 400 K IOPS.
Available in multiple form-factors up to 32 TB (M.2 tops out at 2 TB), the drive's firmware includes optional support for flexible data placement (FDP) to help address the write amplification aspect.
The PM1753 is the current enterprise SSD flagship in Samsung's lineup. With support for 16 NAND channels and capacities up to 32 TB, this U.2 / E3.S SSD has advertised sequential read and write speeds of 14.8 GBps and 11 GBps respectively. Random reads and writes for 4 KB accesses are listed at 3.4 M and 600 K IOPS.
Samsung claims a 1.7x performance improvement and a 1.7x power efficiency improvement over the previous generation (PM1743), making this TLC SSD suitable for AI servers.
The 9th Gen. V-NAND wafer was also available for viewing, though photography was prohibited. Mass production of this flash memory began in April 2024.
Storage
ASMedia Preps USB4 v2 Controller and PHY
The USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) introduced USB4 version 2.0 in fall 2022, and it expects systems and devices with the tech to emerge later this year and into next year. These upcoming products will largely rely on Intel's Barlow Ridge controller, a full-featured Thunderbolt 5 controller that goes above and beond the baseline USB4 v2 spec. And though extremely capable, Intel's Thunderbolt controllers are also quite expensive, and Barlow Ridge isn't expected to be any different. Fortunately, for system and device vendors that just need a basic USB4 v2 solution, ASMedia is also working on its own USB4 v2 controller.
At Computex 2024, ASMedia demonstrated a prototype of its upcoming USB4 v2 physical interface (PHY), which will support USB4 v2's new Gen 4 (160Gbps) data rates and the associated PAM-3 signal encoding. The prototype was implemented using an FPGA, as the company yet has to tape out the completed controller.
Ultimately, the purpose of showing off a FPGA-based PHY at Computex was to allow ASMedia to demonstrate their current PHY design. With the shift to PAM-3 encoding for USB4 v2, ASMedia (and the rest of the USB ecosystem) must develop significantly more complex controllers – and there's no part of that more critical than a solid and reliable PHY design.
As part of their demonstration, ASMedia had a classic eye diagram display. The eye diagram demoed has a clear opening in the center, which is indicative of good signal integrity, as the larger the eye opening, the less distortion and noise in the signal. The horizontal width of the eye opening represents the time window in which the signal can be sampled correctly, so the relatively narrow horizontal spread of the eye opening suggests that there is minimal jitter, meaning the signal transitions are consistent and predictable. Finally, the vertical height of the eye opening indicates the signal amplitude and the rather tall eye opening suggests a higher signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), meaning that the signal is strong compared to any noise present.
ASMedia itself is one of the major suppliers for discrete USB controllers, so the availability of ASMedia's USB4 v2 chip is crucial for adoption of the standard in general. While Intel will spearhead the industry with their Barlow Ridge Thunderbolt 5/USB4 v2 controller, ASMedia's controller is poised to end up in a far larger range of devices. So the importance of the company's USB4 v2 PHY demo is hard to overstate.
Demos aside, ASMedia is hoping to tape the chip out soon. If all goes well, the company expects their first USB4 v2 controllers to hit the market some time in the second half of 2025.
Peripherals
CUDIMM Standard Set to Make Desktop Memory a Bit Smarter and a Lot More Robust While the new CAMM and LPCAMM memory modules for laptops have garnered a great deal of attention in recent months, it's not just the mobile side of the PC memory industry that is looking at changes. The desktop memory market is also coming due for some upgrades to further improve DIMM performance, in the form of a new DIMM variety called the Clocked Unbuffered DIMM (CUDIMM). And while this memory isn't in use quite yet, several memory vendors had their initial CUDIMM products on display at this year's Computex trade show, offering a glimpse into the future of desktop memory.
A variation on traditional Unbuffered DIMMs (UDIMMs), Clocked UDIMMs (and Clocked SODIMMs) have been created as another solution to the ongoing signal integrity challenges presented by DDR5 memory. DDR5 allows for rather speedy transfer rates with removable (and easily installed) DIMMs, but further performance increases are running up against the laws of physics when it comes to the electrical challenges of supporting memory on a stick – particularly with so many capacity/performance combinations like we see today. And while those challenges aren't insurmountable, if DDR5 (and eventually, DDR6) are to keep increasing in speed, some changes appear to be needed to produce more electrically robust DIMMs, which is giving rise to the CUDIMM.
Standardized by JEDEC earlier this year as JESD323, CUDIMMs tweak the traditional unbuffered DIMM by adding a clock driver (CKD) to the DIMM itself, with the tiny IC responsible for regenerating the clock signal driving the actual memory chips. By generating a clean clock locally on the DIMM (rather than directly using the clock from the CPU, as is the case today), CUDIMMs are designed to offer improved stability and reliability at high memory speeds, combating the electrical issues that would otherwise cause reliability issues at faster memory speeds. In other words, adding a clock driver is the key to keeping DDR5 operating reliably at high clockspeeds.
All told, JEDEC is proposing that CUDIMMs be used for DDR5-6400 speeds and higher, with the first version of the specification covering speeds up to DDR5-7200. The new DIMMs will also be drop-in compatible with existing platforms (at least on paper), using the same 288-pin connector as today's standard DDR5 UDIMM and allowing for a relatively smooth transition towards higher DDR5 clockspeeds.
Memory
![](https://twitter.com/share?url=https://compbuddey.blogspot.com/2024/07/tenstorrent-launches-wormhole-ai_22.html&text=Tenstorrent Launches Wormhole AI Processors: 466 FP8 TFLOPS at 300W <p align="center"><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21482/tenstorrent-launches-wormhole-ai-processors-466-fp8-tflops-at-300w"><img src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21482/tesntorrent-wormhole-678_575px.jpg" alt="" /></a></p><p><p>Tenstorrent has unveiled its next-generation Wormhole processor for AI workloads that promises to offer decent performance at a low price. The company currently offers two add-on PCIe cards carrying one or two Wormhole processors as well as TT-LoudBox, and TT-QuietBox workstations aimed at software developers. The whole of today's release is aimed at developers rather than those who will deploy the Wormhole boards for their commercial workloads.</p>
<p>“<em>It is always rewarding to get more of our products into developer hands. Releasing development systems with our Wormhole™ card helps developers scale up and work on multi-chip AI software.</em>” said Jim Keller, CEO of Tenstorrent. “<em>In addition to this launch, we are excited that the tape-out and power-on for our second generation, Blackhole, is going very well.</em>”</p>
<p>Each Wormhole processor packs 72 Tensix cores (featuring five RISC-V cores supporting various data formats) with 108 MB of SRAM to deliver 262 FP8 TFLOPS at 1 GHz at 160W thermal design power. A single-chip Wormhole n150 card carries 12 GB of GDDR6 memory featuring a 288 GB/s bandwidth.</p>
<p>Wormhole processors offer flexible scalability to meet the varying needs of workloads. In a standard workstation setup with four Wormhole n300 cards, the processors can merge to function as a single unit, appearing as a unified, extensive network of Tensix cores to the software. This configuration allows the accelerators to either work on the same workload, be divided among four developers or run up to eight distinct AI models simultaneously. A crucial feature of this scalability is that it operates natively without the need for virtualization. In data center environments, Wormhole processors will scale both inside one machine using PCIe or outside of a single machine using Ethernet. </p>
<p>From performance standpoint, Tenstorrent's single-chip Wormhole n150 card (72 Tensix cores at 1 GHz, 108 MB SRAM, 12 GB GDDR6 at 288 GB/s) is capable of 262 FP8 TFLOPS at 160W, whereas the dual-chip Wormhole n300 board (128 Tensix cores at 1 GHz, 192 MB SRAM, aggregated 24 GB GDDR6 at 576 GB/s) can offer up to 466 FP8 TFLOPS at 300W (according to <a href="https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/tenstorrents-risc-v-based-wormhole-ai-accelerators-are-available-for-pre-order-today-pre-built-workstations-start-at-dollar12000">Tom's Hardware</a>).</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21482/tenstorrent-launches-wormhole-ai-processors-466-fp8-tflops-at-300w"><img alt="" src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21482/tesntorrent-wormhole_575px.jpg" /></a></p>
<p>To put that 466 FP8 TFLOPS at 300W number into context, let's compare it to what AI market leader Nvidia has to offer at this thermal design power. Nvidia's A100 does not support FP8, but it does support INT8 and its peak performance is 624 TOPS (1,248 TOPS with sparsity). By contrast, Nvidia's H100 supports FP8 and its peak performance is massive 1,670 TFLOPS (3,341 TFLOPS with sparsity) at 300W, which is a big difference from Tenstorrent's Wormhole n300. </p>
<p>There is a big catch though. Tenstorrent's Wormhole n150 is offered for $999, whereas n300 is available for $1,399. By contrast, one Nvidia H100 card can retail for $30,000, depending on quantities. Of course, we do not know whether four or eight Wormhole processors can indeed deliver the performance of a single H300, though they will do so at 600W or 1200W TDP, respectively.</p>
<p>In addition to cards, Tenstorrent offers developers pre-built workstations with four n300 cards inside the less expensive Xeon-based TT-LoudBox with active cooling and a premium EPYC-powered TT-QuietBox with liquid cooling.</p>
<p>Sources: <a href="https://tenstorrent.com/vision/tenstorrent-launches-next-generation-wormhole-based-developer-kits-and-workstations">Tenstorrent</a>, <a href="https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/tenstorrents-risc-v-based-wormhole-ai-accelerators-are-available-for-pre-order-today-pre-built-workstations-start-at-dollar12000">Tom's Hardware</a></p>
</p> AI){kind=link}
![](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=https://compbuddey.blogspot.com/2024/07/tenstorrent-launches-wormhole-ai_22.html&media=https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_v042_N9qO7J4Z1Pd1CDS0LHeeh4aWtdqw8bKKocaShm3cE0ukki3YgSX-7CYNOHLz0NUc6ZvHFoF8RJySkNvtlPu9YD7S1lmYpOkDdbT38Ip5Q7h5uGyzo5noQodJtFRSwF3AzsR4FiN5pkQ2I&description=Tenstorrent Launches Wormhole AI Processors: 466 FP8 TFLOPS at 300W <p align="center"><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21482/tenstorrent-launches-wormhole-ai-processors-466-fp8-tflops-at-300w"><img src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21482/tesntorrent-wormhole-678_575px.jpg" alt="" /></a></p><p><p>Tenstorrent has unveiled its next-generation Wormhole processor for AI workloads that promises to offer decent performance at a low price. The company currently offers two add-on PCIe cards carrying one or two Wormhole processors as well as TT-LoudBox, and TT-QuietBox workstations aimed at software developers. The whole of today's release is aimed at developers rather than those who will deploy the Wormhole boards for their commercial workloads.</p>
<p>“<em>It is always rewarding to get more of our products into developer hands. Releasing development systems with our Wormhole™ card helps developers scale up and work on multi-chip AI software.</em>” said Jim Keller, CEO of Tenstorrent. “<em>In addition to this launch, we are excited that the tape-out and power-on for our second generation, Blackhole, is going very well.</em>”</p>
<p>Each Wormhole processor packs 72 Tensix cores (featuring five RISC-V cores supporting various data formats) with 108 MB of SRAM to deliver 262 FP8 TFLOPS at 1 GHz at 160W thermal design power. A single-chip Wormhole n150 card carries 12 GB of GDDR6 memory featuring a 288 GB/s bandwidth.</p>
<p>Wormhole processors offer flexible scalability to meet the varying needs of workloads. In a standard workstation setup with four Wormhole n300 cards, the processors can merge to function as a single unit, appearing as a unified, extensive network of Tensix cores to the software. This configuration allows the accelerators to either work on the same workload, be divided among four developers or run up to eight distinct AI models simultaneously. A crucial feature of this scalability is that it operates natively without the need for virtualization. In data center environments, Wormhole processors will scale both inside one machine using PCIe or outside of a single machine using Ethernet. </p>
<p>From performance standpoint, Tenstorrent's single-chip Wormhole n150 card (72 Tensix cores at 1 GHz, 108 MB SRAM, 12 GB GDDR6 at 288 GB/s) is capable of 262 FP8 TFLOPS at 160W, whereas the dual-chip Wormhole n300 board (128 Tensix cores at 1 GHz, 192 MB SRAM, aggregated 24 GB GDDR6 at 576 GB/s) can offer up to 466 FP8 TFLOPS at 300W (according to <a href="https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/tenstorrents-risc-v-based-wormhole-ai-accelerators-are-available-for-pre-order-today-pre-built-workstations-start-at-dollar12000">Tom's Hardware</a>).</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21482/tenstorrent-launches-wormhole-ai-processors-466-fp8-tflops-at-300w"><img alt="" src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21482/tesntorrent-wormhole_575px.jpg" /></a></p>
<p>To put that 466 FP8 TFLOPS at 300W number into context, let's compare it to what AI market leader Nvidia has to offer at this thermal design power. Nvidia's A100 does not support FP8, but it does support INT8 and its peak performance is 624 TOPS (1,248 TOPS with sparsity). By contrast, Nvidia's H100 supports FP8 and its peak performance is massive 1,670 TFLOPS (3,341 TFLOPS with sparsity) at 300W, which is a big difference from Tenstorrent's Wormhole n300. </p>
<p>There is a big catch though. Tenstorrent's Wormhole n150 is offered for $999, whereas n300 is available for $1,399. By contrast, one Nvidia H100 card can retail for $30,000, depending on quantities. Of course, we do not know whether four or eight Wormhole processors can indeed deliver the performance of a single H300, though they will do so at 600W or 1200W TDP, respectively.</p>
<p>In addition to cards, Tenstorrent offers developers pre-built workstations with four n300 cards inside the less expensive Xeon-based TT-LoudBox with active cooling and a premium EPYC-powered TT-QuietBox with liquid cooling.</p>
<p>Sources: <a href="https://tenstorrent.com/vision/tenstorrent-launches-next-generation-wormhole-based-developer-kits-and-workstations">Tenstorrent</a>, <a href="https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/tenstorrents-risc-v-based-wormhole-ai-accelerators-are-available-for-pre-order-today-pre-built-workstations-start-at-dollar12000">Tom's Hardware</a></p>
</p> AI){kind=link}
![](https://web.whatsapp.com/send?text=Tenstorrent Launches Wormhole AI Processors: 466 FP8 TFLOPS at 300W <p align="center"><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21482/tenstorrent-launches-wormhole-ai-processors-466-fp8-tflops-at-300w"><img src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21482/tesntorrent-wormhole-678_575px.jpg" alt="" /></a></p><p><p>Tenstorrent has unveiled its next-generation Wormhole processor for AI workloads that promises to offer decent performance at a low price. The company currently offers two add-on PCIe cards carrying one or two Wormhole processors as well as TT-LoudBox, and TT-QuietBox workstations aimed at software developers. The whole of today's release is aimed at developers rather than those who will deploy the Wormhole boards for their commercial workloads.</p>
<p>“<em>It is always rewarding to get more of our products into developer hands. Releasing development systems with our Wormhole™ card helps developers scale up and work on multi-chip AI software.</em>” said Jim Keller, CEO of Tenstorrent. “<em>In addition to this launch, we are excited that the tape-out and power-on for our second generation, Blackhole, is going very well.</em>”</p>
<p>Each Wormhole processor packs 72 Tensix cores (featuring five RISC-V cores supporting various data formats) with 108 MB of SRAM to deliver 262 FP8 TFLOPS at 1 GHz at 160W thermal design power. A single-chip Wormhole n150 card carries 12 GB of GDDR6 memory featuring a 288 GB/s bandwidth.</p>
<p>Wormhole processors offer flexible scalability to meet the varying needs of workloads. In a standard workstation setup with four Wormhole n300 cards, the processors can merge to function as a single unit, appearing as a unified, extensive network of Tensix cores to the software. This configuration allows the accelerators to either work on the same workload, be divided among four developers or run up to eight distinct AI models simultaneously. A crucial feature of this scalability is that it operates natively without the need for virtualization. In data center environments, Wormhole processors will scale both inside one machine using PCIe or outside of a single machine using Ethernet. </p>
<p>From performance standpoint, Tenstorrent's single-chip Wormhole n150 card (72 Tensix cores at 1 GHz, 108 MB SRAM, 12 GB GDDR6 at 288 GB/s) is capable of 262 FP8 TFLOPS at 160W, whereas the dual-chip Wormhole n300 board (128 Tensix cores at 1 GHz, 192 MB SRAM, aggregated 24 GB GDDR6 at 576 GB/s) can offer up to 466 FP8 TFLOPS at 300W (according to <a href="https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/tenstorrents-risc-v-based-wormhole-ai-accelerators-are-available-for-pre-order-today-pre-built-workstations-start-at-dollar12000">Tom's Hardware</a>).</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21482/tenstorrent-launches-wormhole-ai-processors-466-fp8-tflops-at-300w"><img alt="" src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21482/tesntorrent-wormhole_575px.jpg" /></a></p>
<p>To put that 466 FP8 TFLOPS at 300W number into context, let's compare it to what AI market leader Nvidia has to offer at this thermal design power. Nvidia's A100 does not support FP8, but it does support INT8 and its peak performance is 624 TOPS (1,248 TOPS with sparsity). By contrast, Nvidia's H100 supports FP8 and its peak performance is massive 1,670 TFLOPS (3,341 TFLOPS with sparsity) at 300W, which is a big difference from Tenstorrent's Wormhole n300. </p>
<p>There is a big catch though. Tenstorrent's Wormhole n150 is offered for $999, whereas n300 is available for $1,399. By contrast, one Nvidia H100 card can retail for $30,000, depending on quantities. Of course, we do not know whether four or eight Wormhole processors can indeed deliver the performance of a single H300, though they will do so at 600W or 1200W TDP, respectively.</p>
<p>In addition to cards, Tenstorrent offers developers pre-built workstations with four n300 cards inside the less expensive Xeon-based TT-LoudBox with active cooling and a premium EPYC-powered TT-QuietBox with liquid cooling.</p>
<p>Sources: <a href="https://tenstorrent.com/vision/tenstorrent-launches-next-generation-wormhole-based-developer-kits-and-workstations">Tenstorrent</a>, <a href="https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/tenstorrents-risc-v-based-wormhole-ai-accelerators-are-available-for-pre-order-today-pre-built-workstations-start-at-dollar12000">Tom's Hardware</a></p>
</p> AI | https://compbuddey.blogspot.com/2024/07/tenstorrent-launches-wormhole-ai_22.html){kind=link}
![](mailto:?subject=Tenstorrent Launches Wormhole AI Processors: 466 FP8 TFLOPS at 300W <p align="center"><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21482/tenstorrent-launches-wormhole-ai-processors-466-fp8-tflops-at-300w"><img src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21482/tesntorrent-wormhole-678_575px.jpg" alt="" /></a></p><p><p>Tenstorrent has unveiled its next-generation Wormhole processor for AI workloads that promises to offer decent performance at a low price. The company currently offers two add-on PCIe cards carrying one or two Wormhole processors as well as TT-LoudBox, and TT-QuietBox workstations aimed at software developers. The whole of today's release is aimed at developers rather than those who will deploy the Wormhole boards for their commercial workloads.</p>
<p>“<em>It is always rewarding to get more of our products into developer hands. Releasing development systems with our Wormhole™ card helps developers scale up and work on multi-chip AI software.</em>” said Jim Keller, CEO of Tenstorrent. “<em>In addition to this launch, we are excited that the tape-out and power-on for our second generation, Blackhole, is going very well.</em>”</p>
<p>Each Wormhole processor packs 72 Tensix cores (featuring five RISC-V cores supporting various data formats) with 108 MB of SRAM to deliver 262 FP8 TFLOPS at 1 GHz at 160W thermal design power. A single-chip Wormhole n150 card carries 12 GB of GDDR6 memory featuring a 288 GB/s bandwidth.</p>
<p>Wormhole processors offer flexible scalability to meet the varying needs of workloads. In a standard workstation setup with four Wormhole n300 cards, the processors can merge to function as a single unit, appearing as a unified, extensive network of Tensix cores to the software. This configuration allows the accelerators to either work on the same workload, be divided among four developers or run up to eight distinct AI models simultaneously. A crucial feature of this scalability is that it operates natively without the need for virtualization. In data center environments, Wormhole processors will scale both inside one machine using PCIe or outside of a single machine using Ethernet. </p>
<p>From performance standpoint, Tenstorrent's single-chip Wormhole n150 card (72 Tensix cores at 1 GHz, 108 MB SRAM, 12 GB GDDR6 at 288 GB/s) is capable of 262 FP8 TFLOPS at 160W, whereas the dual-chip Wormhole n300 board (128 Tensix cores at 1 GHz, 192 MB SRAM, aggregated 24 GB GDDR6 at 576 GB/s) can offer up to 466 FP8 TFLOPS at 300W (according to <a href="https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/tenstorrents-risc-v-based-wormhole-ai-accelerators-are-available-for-pre-order-today-pre-built-workstations-start-at-dollar12000">Tom's Hardware</a>).</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.anandtech.com/show/21482/tenstorrent-launches-wormhole-ai-processors-466-fp8-tflops-at-300w"><img alt="" src="https://images.anandtech.com/doci/21482/tesntorrent-wormhole_575px.jpg" /></a></p>
<p>To put that 466 FP8 TFLOPS at 300W number into context, let's compare it to what AI market leader Nvidia has to offer at this thermal design power. Nvidia's A100 does not support FP8, but it does support INT8 and its peak performance is 624 TOPS (1,248 TOPS with sparsity). By contrast, Nvidia's H100 supports FP8 and its peak performance is massive 1,670 TFLOPS (3,341 TFLOPS with sparsity) at 300W, which is a big difference from Tenstorrent's Wormhole n300. </p>
<p>There is a big catch though. Tenstorrent's Wormhole n150 is offered for $999, whereas n300 is available for $1,399. By contrast, one Nvidia H100 card can retail for $30,000, depending on quantities. Of course, we do not know whether four or eight Wormhole processors can indeed deliver the performance of a single H300, though they will do so at 600W or 1200W TDP, respectively.</p>
<p>In addition to cards, Tenstorrent offers developers pre-built workstations with four n300 cards inside the less expensive Xeon-based TT-LoudBox with active cooling and a premium EPYC-powered TT-QuietBox with liquid cooling.</p>
<p>Sources: <a href="https://tenstorrent.com/vision/tenstorrent-launches-next-generation-wormhole-based-developer-kits-and-workstations">Tenstorrent</a>, <a href="https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/tenstorrents-risc-v-based-wormhole-ai-accelerators-are-available-for-pre-order-today-pre-built-workstations-start-at-dollar12000">Tom's Hardware</a></p>
</p> AI&body=https://compbuddey.blogspot.com/2024/07/tenstorrent-launches-wormhole-ai_22.html){kind=link}
Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's.
In Light of Stability Concerns, Intel Issues Request to Motherboards Vendors to Actually Follow Stock Power Settings Across the internet, from online forums such as Reddit to various other tech media outlets, there's a lot of furor around reports of Intel's top-end 14th and 13th Gen K series of processors running into stability issues. As Intel's flagship chips, these parts come aggressively clocked in order to maximize performance through various implementations of boost and turbo, leaving them running close to their limits out of the box. But with high-end motherboards further goosing these chips to wring even more performance out of them, it would seem that the Intel desktop ecosystem has finally reached a tipping point where all of these efforts to boost performance have pushed these flagship chips to unstable conditions. To that end, Intel has released new gudiance to its consumer motherboard partners, strongly encouraging them to actually implment Intel's stock power settings, and to use those baseline settings as their out-of-the-box default.
While the underlying conditions are nothing new – we've published stories time and time again about motherboard features such as multi-core enhancement (MCE) and raised power consumption limits that seek to maximize how hard and how long systems are able to turbo boost – the issue has finally come to a head in the last couple of months thanks to accumulating reports of system instability with Intel's 13900K and 14900K processors. These instability problems are eventually solved by either tamping down on these motherboard performance-boosting features – bringing the chips back down to something closer to Intel's official operating parameters – or downclocking the chips entirely.
Intel first began publicly investigating the matter on the 27th of February, when Intel's Communications Manager, Thomas Hannaford, posted a thread on Intel's Community Product Support Forms titled "Regarding Reports of 13th/14th Gen Unlocked Desktop Users Experiencing Stability Issues". In this thread, Thomas Hannaford said, "Intel is aware of reports regarding Intel Core 13th and 14th Gen unlocked desktop processors experiencing issues with certain workloads. We're engaged with our partners and are conducting analysis of the reported issues. If you are experiencing these issues, please reach out to Intel Customer Support for further assistance in the interim."
Since that post went up, additional reports have been circulating about instability issues across various online forums and message boards. The underlying culprit has been theorized to be motherboards implementing an array of strategies to improve chip performance, including aggressive multi-core enhancement settings, "unlimited" PL2 turbo, and reduced load line calibration settings. At no point do any of these settings overclock a CPU and push it to a higher clockspeed than it's validated for, but these settings do everything possible to keep a chip at the highest clockspeed possible at all times – and in the process seem to have gone a step too far.
From "Why Intel Processors Draw More Power Than Expected: TDP and Turbo Explained"
We wrote a piece initially covering multi-core enhancement in 2012, detailing how motherboard manufacturers try to stay competitive with each other and leverage any headroom within the silicon to output the highest performance levels. And more recently, we've talked about how desktop systems with Intel chips are now regularly exceeding their rated TDPs – sometimes by extreme amounts – as motherboard vendors continue to push them to run as hard as possible for the best performance.
But things have changed since 2012. At the time, this wasn't so much of an issue, as overclocking was actually very favorable to increasing the performance of processors. But in 2024 with chips such as the Intel Core i9-14900K, we have CPUs shipping with a maximum turbo clock speed of 6.0 GHz and a peak power consumption of over 400 Watts, figures that were only a pipe dream a decade ago.
Jumping to the present time, over the weekend Intel released a statement about the matter to its partners, outlining their investigation so far and their sug... CPUs
From "Why Intel Processors Draw More Power Than Expected: TDP and Turbo Explained"
Samsung's 128 TB-Class BM1743 Enterprise SSD Displayed at FMS 2024
Samsung had quietly launched its BM1743 enterprise QLC SSD last month with a hefty 61.44 TB SKU. At FMS 2024, the company had the even larger 122.88 TB version of that SSD on display, alongside a few recorded benchmarking sessions. Compared to the previous generation, the BM1743 comes with a 4.1x improvement in I/O performance, improvement in data retention, and a 45% improvement in power efficiency for sequential writes.
The 128 TB-class QLC SSD boasts of sequential read speeds of 7.5 GBps and write speeds of 3 GBps. Random reads come in at 1.6 M IOPS, while 16 KB random writes clock in at 45K IOPS. Based on the quoted random write access granularity, it appears that Samsung is using a 16 KB indirection unit (IU) to optimize flash management. This is similar to the strategy adopted by Solidigm with IUs larger than 4K in their high-capacity SSDs.
A recorded benchmark session on the company's PM9D3a 8-channel Gen 5 SSD was also on display.
The SSD family is being promoted as a mainstream option for datacenters, and boasts of sequential reads up to 12 GBps and writes up to 6.8 GBps. Random reads clock in at 2 M IOPS, and random writes at 400 K IOPS.
Available in multiple form-factors up to 32 TB (M.2 tops out at 2 TB), the drive's firmware includes optional support for flexible data placement (FDP) to help address the write amplification aspect.
The PM1753 is the current enterprise SSD flagship in Samsung's lineup. With support for 16 NAND channels and capacities up to 32 TB, this U.2 / E3.S SSD has advertised sequential read and write speeds of 14.8 GBps and 11 GBps respectively. Random reads and writes for 4 KB accesses are listed at 3.4 M and 600 K IOPS.
Samsung claims a 1.7x performance improvement and a 1.7x power efficiency improvement over the previous generation (PM1743), making this TLC SSD suitable for AI servers.
The 9th Gen. V-NAND wafer was also available for viewing, though photography was prohibited. Mass production of this flash memory began in April 2024.
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