Groq, a company specializing in developing chips for AI processing, has recently announced the discontinuation of chip sales to general customers. This decision was made after realizing the difficulty in selling chips to customers who require high investment. Currently, there is a large number of customers opting for cloud services.
For Groq’s customers requiring a large number of chips in the future, they will need to sign agreements with data centers to install servers specifically for their use. One such customer currently is Aramco, an oil company from Saudi Arabia. However, there are exceptions such as government projects that can still directly purchase chips.
Jonathan Ross, the CEO of Groq, emphasized that besides the advantage in speed, another crucial aspect is that Groq does not use HBM memory, which is currently in high demand by various chip manufacturers until almost the end of 2025. This has become a bottleneck for chip producers like NVIDIA who rely on HBM technology.
The Groq 1 chip utilizes 14nm manufacturing technology and has been in development for several years. The company is now in the process of developing the next generation chip using 4nm technology, which is expected to significantly increase efficiency. Despite this, Groq affirms that their chip is the fastest in the LLM field, surpassing even NVIDIA’s Blackwell chip.
TLDR: Groq is discontinuing chip sales to general customers due to high investment requirements. They are focusing on providing chips to customers through data center agreements, with a commitment to developing cutting-edge technology in the chip industry.
Leave a Comment