CPU startup Tachyum has previously said that one of its Prodigy universal processor units can rival dozens of Nvidia H200 GPUs. The 192-core, 5nm processor offers 4.5 times the performance of the best processors for cloud workloads and claims to be six times more effective than GPUs for AI.
Now the company has announced the Prodigy ATX platform, an AI workstation that promises to run advanced AI models for just $5,000. The ambitious system, which features an impressive 1TB of memory, is designed to make sophisticated AI models accessible to a wider audience.
The Prodigy ATX platform is built around a 96-core Prodigy processor, which is designed with only half of its die enabled, a strategy intended to reduce power consumption and improve performance, thereby reducing costs and making the platform more accessible.
Cash for LLM
The system is expected to come equipped with 1 TB of DDR5-6400 SDRAM using 16 memory modules, offering a maximum bandwidth of 819.2 GB/s. The system design includes three PCIe x16 5.0 slots, three NVMe M.2-2280 slots with a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface, and SATA connectors for SSD and HDD.
Tachyum says its Prodigy ATX platform is particularly effective for running LLMs that are known for their high memory capacity requirements.
A single Prodigy system can reportedly run a ChatGPT4 model with 1.7 trillion parameters, which would require 52 NVIDIA H100 GPUs to run at significantly higher cost and power consumption.
Despite the impressive specifications, there are questions about the economic viability of the Prodigy ATX platform for Tachyum. As Tom's Hardware notes, the total cost of the system components, excluding the Prodigy processor, is estimated at about $4,800. However, Tachyum CEO Dr. Radoslav Danilak remains optimistic, saying that the platform's powerful AI capabilities will enable organizations of all sizes to compete on AI initiatives.
“Generative AI will become widely used much faster than anyone originally anticipated,” Dr. Danilak said. “In the next year or two, AI will be a necessary component in websites, chatbots, and other critical productivity components to ensure a good user experience. Prodigy's powerful AI capabilities allow LLMs to run much more easily.” “and cost-effective than existing CPU + GPGPU-based systems, empowering organizations of all sizes to compete in AI initiatives that would otherwise be dominated by the largest players in their industry.”
The launch of the Prodigy ATX platform has been delayed several times and the latest plan pegs the processor launch for the second half of 2024. It remains to be seen if Tachyum can deliver on its promises and revolutionize the AI landscape.
