Google takes on NVIDIA with new AI developer tool
What's the story
Google has launched TorchTPU, an open-source version of PyTorch, in a bid to take on NVIDIA's dominance in the artificial intelligence (AI) space. The move comes after Amazon's similar attempt with its own version of PyTorch called TorchNeuron. Both tech giants are looking to break NVIDIA's stronghold on the AI industry, where most applications are designed to run on NVIDIA's graphics processing units (GPUs).
Tool evolution
PyTorch's origins and its current status
PyTorch, an open-source toolkit for building, training, and running AI models, is used by 85% of such apps.
Developed by Meta (formerly Facebook) in 2016, it was designed to work specifically with NVIDIA's GPUs.
In 2022, Meta handed over PyTorch to the Linux Foundation, a nonprofit organization that oversees several important open-source projects.
New launch
TorchTPU simplifies porting AI apps to Google's TPUs and cloud
Google's TorchTPU allows AI apps to run on its Tensor Processing Units (TPUs). It also simplifies the process of moving existing PyTorch apps to TPUs and Google Cloud, requiring just a simple configuration change.
This is similar to Amazon's TorchNeuron, which lets AI apps be ported without rewriting them.
Developer support
Collaborations and TPU agent suite launch bolster TorchTPU's capabilities
Google has collaborated with Meta, Hugging Face, Inferact (creator of vLLM), and RadixArk (creator of SGLang) to ensure TorchTPU's features and code libraries work seamlessly with these popular AI development tools.
The tech giant also launched a dedicated tool called the TPU agent suite, which helps developers transition their apps to Google's chips and cloud while fixing errors along the way.