Google is relying on its own chips for its AI system Gemini. Here’s why that’s a seismic change for the industry

By Alaa Mohasseb, Senior Lecturer in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, University of Portsmouth

For many years, the US company Nvidia shaped the foundations of modern artificial intelligence. Its graphics processing units (GPUs) are a specialised type of computer chip originally designed to handle the processing demands of graphics and animation. But they’re also great for the repetitive calculations required by AI systems.

Thus, these chips have powered the rapid rise of large language models – the technology behind AI chatbots – and they have became the familiar engine behind almost every major AI breakthrough.

This hardware sat quietly in the background while most…

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