Wafer Scale Engine (WSE)

A new computing cluster delivers more bang per chip. Cerebras unveiled Andromeda, a supercomputer based on its processors. Unlike conventional clusters, the system’s processing speed rises linearly with additional processors.

The trend toward ever-larger models crossed the threshold from immense to ginormous. Google kicked off 2021 with Switch Transformer, the first published work to exceed a trillion parameters, weighing in at 1.6 trillion.

A high-profile semiconductor startup made a bid for the future of AI computation. UK startup Graphcore released the Colossus Mk2, a processor intended to perform the matrix math calculations at the heart of deep learning more efficiently than other specialized processors.

Silicon Valley startup Cerebras shifted out of stealth mode to unveil its flagship product: an enormous chip designed from the ground up to accelerate neural networks.