Cerebras launches new server chip and system designed to speed AI chatbots

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug 18 : Cerebras Systems announced on Tuesday a new version of its server hardware that includes its dinner-plate-sized chips that it says will speed AI chatbot queries.

Cerebras makes AI hardware and chips that compete with Nvidia and targets the portion of AI called inference, the computing process of generating an answer in a chatbot such as Anthropic’s Claude.

The new system, called the CS-4, is a server rack powered by three of the large chips the company designs, which Cerebras said translates into better performance. The hardware is based around the company’s Nexus server architecture, which includes pluggable modules that house the chips.

In part, Cerebras' chips gain a speed advantage because they are large enough to avoid the energy and slowdown of moving data from one chip to another. 

The new machine is available in the third quarter and the chips are fabricated with the TSMC 5-nanometer manufacturing process, the company said.

Cerebras also designed the new system to be easier to set up with 50 per cent fewer components, which Chief Technology Officer Sean Lie said at a media briefing in San Francisco would speed data center construction.

The server rack Cerebras designed includes a chip called WSE-3 Turbo and new networking components that Lie said would speed data movement between the chips. Cerebras plans another generation of the chip and server in 2027.

The company expects to deliver 600 megawatts' worth of computing power by the end of 2027, CEO Andrew Feldman said. The company’s engineering plans are focused on speeding the amount of data its future chips and systems can crunch.

“We're going to get four times as fast between now and the end of the year, end of 2027, and we're going to get 20 times more throughput,” Feldman said at the briefing.

Last week, Cerebras reported an adjusted loss of $6.9 million on sales of $180.1 million.