AMD acquires Taalas to boost inference performance by etching models in silicon

AMD announced it has acquired AI chip startup Taalas to boost inference performance by etching models into silicon. The company said early tech demos show model-specific integrated circuits churning out up to 17,000 tokens a second. The acquisition targets the inference stage of AI workloads where models generate predictions. Taalas technology creates integrated circuits tailored to specific models rather than running them on general-purpose hardware. AMD aims to integrate the startup's approach into its product roadmap to accelerate AI processing speeds. The deal reflects a broader industry push toward specialized silicon for artificial intelligence applications.