Japan’s state-backed research consortium Leading-edge Semiconductor Technology Center (LSTC) and Japanese chipmaker Rapidus will send 200 engineers to the United States later this year to train at startup Tenstorrent, which makes chips for artificial intelligence, according to a report by Nikkei Asia.
Candidates for the training program will be mainly graduate students or chip designers from the private sector aged between 30 and 49. After their training, the candidates are expected to return to Japan to work as engineers in the telecommunications, autos, semiconductor industries or at research institutions.
Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has said it will extend $6.4 million in subsidies to support the project, particularly for pre-departure training and living expenses of the trainees while overseas.
LSTC is a research group formed by Rapidus and the government in 2022. Members include the University of Tokyo, as well as other national universities and research institutes.
Under their partnership, Rapidus and Tenstorrent are seeking to develop specialized AI chips with lower power consumption than the graphics processing units made by U.S.-based Nvidia, the AI sector’s current mainstay.
“The joint effort by Tenstorrent and LSTC to create a chiplet-based edge AI accelerator represents a groundbreaking venture into the first cross-organizational chiplet development in semiconductor industry,” said Wei-Han Lien, Chief Architect of Tenstorrent’s RISC-V products.
“The edge AI accelerator will incorporate LSTC’s AI chiplet along with Tenstorrent’s RISC-V and peripheral chiplet technology. This pioneering strategy harnesses the collective capabilities of both organizations to use the adaptable and efficient nature of chiplet technology to meet the increasing needs of AI applications at the edge,” Lien added.
