Google to introduce two variants of in-house chips, Bloomberg News reports

Nov 9 : Alphabet's Google is introducing two new variations of its in-house tensor processing units, Bloomberg News reported on Monday.

The search giant's shares were up more than 2 per cent in premarket trading. Through last close, the stock has fallen 9 per cent so far this year.

Alphabet did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. Reuters could not independently verify the report.

Google's homegrown chips, once reserved for internal use, have emerged as a challenger to Nvidia's pricey graphics processors that dominate AI workloads worldwide.

The TPU 8tx and 8i Max variants are not new chips, but reconfigured versions designed to handle workloads customers have been asking for, Google's chief technologist for AI infrastructure Amin Vahdat told Bloomberg News.

The 8tx is designed for secure and confidential workloads used by government agencies and companies in regulated industries, while the 8i Max is designed for AI applications that require long context windows, the report said.