The new chip bestiary Max Smolaks looks at the future of AI workloads, and the uncertainty around hardware that’s aiming to dethrone the GPU Max Smolaks Contributor
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n 1971, Intel, then a manufacturer of random access memory, officially released the 4004, its first single-chip central processing unit, thus kickstarting nearly 50 years of CPU dominance in computing. In 1989, while working at CERN, Tim Berners-Lee used a NeXT computer, designed around the Motorola 68030 CPU, to launch the first website, making the machine used the world’s first web server. CPUs were the most expensive, the most scientifically advanced, and the most power-hungry parts of a typical server: they became the beating hearts of the digital age, and semiconductors turned into the benchmark for our species' advancement.
32 DCD Magazine • datacenterdynamics.com