Can’t say this was unexpected as NVIDIA retorts Google’s claim that its custom ASIC Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) was up to 30 times faster than CPUs and NVIDIA’s K80 G for inferencing workloads.

NVIDIA pointed out that Google’s  TPU paper has drawn a clear conclusion – without accelerated computing, the scale-out of AI is simply not practical.

The role of data centres has changed considerably in today’s economy. Instead of just serving web pages, advertising and video content, data centres are now recognising voices, detecting images in video streams and connecting users with information they need when they need it.