2015
Google designed, verified, built and deployed its first tensor processing unit in 15 months.
“So the TPU was designed, verified, built, and deployed into data centers in 15 months.”
Topic
Tensor Processing Unit
6 facts from 4 episodes, in date order. These are what speakers said on the shows, each linked to the moment it was said. They aren't independently verified.
2016
Reiner Pope says Google's TPU v1 was announced in 2016 and helped prompt a wave of AI chip startups.
“TPU v1 was announced in 2016, I think. That was what actually kind of led to the creation of all of those 2016, 2017 startups.”
2016
Pope says TPU v1 was built in roughly a year to a year and a half by a team of 20 to 30 people.
“It was done on a very short timeline, maybe, I don't know the full details, but maybe about a year or so, maybe a year and a half, with a skeleton team of 20, 30 people.”
2016
Pichai recalls that Google announced its TPU chips and AI data centers at Google I/O around 2016.
“We were in the seventh version of TPUs. I remember it might have been 2016 Google I .O. where we announced the TPUs and spoke about we are building AI data centers.”
Undated
Gandhi said Google was investing heavily in its next TPU generation, which he referred to as V5, with a focus on scaling inference.
“We have V5V, etcetera. We are investing, uh, heavily, and you know, others are doing.”
Undated
According to the hosts, the TPU project was carried out at a Google satellite office in Madison, Wisconsin.
“all of this didn't happen in Mountain View. It was at a Google satellite office in Madison, Wisconsin.”
Episodes
- 6 Oct 2025Google Part III: The AI Company4h 4m
- 23 Oct 2023What Google Cloud Can Teach Enterprises Developing & Rolling Out AI Tools, With Kawal Gandhi32m
- 7 Apr 2026The history and future of AI at Google, with Sundar Pichai1h 9m
- 26 Feb 2026Reiner Pope of MatX on accelerating AI with transformer-optimized chips1h 13m