April 19 (Reuters) – Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL)’s Google is in talks with Marvell Technology (MRVL) to develop two new chips aimed at running AI models more efficiently, The Information reported on Sunday citing two people with knowledge of the discussions.
One of the chips is a memory processing unit designed to work with Google’s tensor processing unit (TPU) and the other chip is a new TPU built specifically for running AI models, the report said.
Google has been pushing to make its TPUs a viable alternative to Nvidia (NVDA)’s dominant GPUs. TPU sales have become a key driver of growth in Google’s cloud revenue as it aims to show investors that its AI investments are generating returns.
Reuters could not immediately verify the report. Google and Marvell did not immediately respond to a request for a comment.
The companies aim to finalize the design of the memory processing unit as soon as next year before handing it off for test production, according to the report.
(Reporting by Angela Christy in BengaluruEditing by Tomasz Janowski)