Google TPUs: A Deep Dive into Hardware-Software Co-design for Extreme Performance and Efficiency
2025-06-22
This article delves into the architecture of Google's TPUs, from single-chip to multi-pod levels, detailing how they achieve extremely high throughput and energy efficiency through systolic arrays, ahead-of-time compilation, and a unique interconnect network. The TPU design philosophy centers on hardware-software co-optimization, where the XLA compiler pre-plans memory accesses, minimizing cache usage and thus power consumption. The article also analyzes the impact of different topologies on training performance and how Google uses OCS to enable flexible TPU slice configurations, improving resource utilization.
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Hardware