Google Cloud announced Nov. 9 that its TPU 8tx AI system will use fifth-generation processors from Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), targeting organizations that process sensitive models and data.
Google positions 8tx mainly for inference designed to keep information confidential, while also supporting training on a smaller scale. It says the system uses the accelerator silicon in its TPU 8t.
Google said requests from highly regulated customers helped drive the design. It identifies government agencies and businesses in regulated sectors as potential users. The company says information encrypted in storage or transit generally has to be exposed in memory while a computer processes it, a vulnerability 8tx is intended to address.
AMD describes EPYC as the host layer that prepares input and keeps jobs organized with Google’s TPUs. AMD says protection combines Secure Encrypted Virtualization (SEV), security features in the TPU, and checks of an accelerator’s identity and security configuration. The company says these measures can cover prompts, model weights and intermediate data in host memory and as it moves between CPU and accelerator.
AMD says Infinity Guard capabilities must be enabled by the cloud provider or server manufacturer; available features also vary by processor generation and series. AMD did not disclose the financial value of its Google arrangement.
The selection places AMD processors in a Google system built around the company’s own AI accelerators. AMD reported $8.5 billion in Data Center revenue for its third fiscal quarter, up 97% from a year earlier. It credited EPYC demand and the introduction of AMD Instinct MI450 Series GPUs for the increase.
Google introduced TPU 8t and 8i in April for large-scale training and reasoning, respectively. Announced together on Nov. 9, 8tx and 8i Max bring the eighth-generation lineup to four system configurations, Google said.
Google also claims the Boardfly network can make 8tx latency as much as two times lower than 8t. The announcement did not state the test conditions for that comparison. Google scheduled a broadcast about the systems for noon ET Monday, Nov. 9.
