Tachyum this week issued a press release where it re-emphasized its plans to start mass production of its Prodigy Universal Processor in the second half of 2024. Tachyum also expressed its optimism about the future, as demand for processors used for artificial intelligence (AI), high performance computing (HPC), and datacenters is set to boom in 2024 and beyond. Meanwhile, the company admitted that it still has not taped out its processor.
"Tachyum showed its resilience during a challenging 2023 when we experienced the worst semiconductor downturn in years and weathered the challenges faced with failed memory and interface IP blocks from a key vendor," said Dr. Radoslav Danilak, founder and CEO of Tachyum.
Meanwhile, a new version of the company roadmap clearly indicates that the 1st Generation Prodigy processor will feature 192 cores, something that was not initially reflected in its December roadmap, though the company fixed the omission quickly. The chip is expected to hit mass production on a 5nm process technology in the second half of 2024, based on the document the company sent to Tom's Hardware.
On the hardware side of matters, Tachyum has made quite some progress, albeit without disclosing any timeline for its chip tapeout. The company says its team 'finishes final debugging and cleaning of the chip.' Meanwhile, the motherboard design team is expected to reveal a reference design of a Prodigy-based machine, but that happens after the chip's design signoff.
"With the final reference chip available, Tachyum will target early adopter markets, including high performance computing and artificial intelligence applications," the company says without elaborating exact timeframes.
On the software side of matters, things look quite promising as the company has ensured 'seamless' execution of ' non-native (x86_64) applications under Linux.' Also, Tachyum managed to integrate a baseboard management controller (BMC) and unified extensible firmware interface (UEFI) platforms into the Prodigy FPGA prototype system, the company said.
"The successes we were able to achieve while tweaking our product roadmap have brought us to a 2024 full of anticipation as we move towards volume production of Prodigy and the fulfilment of a multibillion-dollar sales pipeline," Danilak said. "We look forward to fulfilling our commitment to transforming ordinary data centers into Universal Computing Centers in the near future."
