Parts/Accelerators/Graphcore IPU
Accelerators · Colossus · 2020
Graphcore IPU
Intelligence Processing Unit, with large distributed on-chip SRAM in place of external HBM. The most substantial European merchant AI accelerator.
Why this part
Massive on-chip SRAM and no external DRAM at all, aimed at models with irregular or sparse structure where a GPU's wide regular pipelines idle. The architecture was well regarded and the company was sold to SoftBank in 2024 after failing to displace CUDA. Graphcore is the clearest cautionary case in this taxonomy: architectural merit does not move a market whose costs are dominated by software already written.
Systems using this part
- Systems
- 1
- Rmax underneath
- 7.94 PFlop/s
- Units recorded
- 4
| System | Role | Country | Units | System Rmax | Supplied by | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| fortytwo 2023 | Accelerator | Germany | 4 | 7.94 PFlop/s | Graphcore | #98 → |
“Units recorded” sums only the edges where a public source states a quantity. It is a floor, not a total, and should never be read as installed base.