Tachyum Closes $25 Million Series A Round to Bring 64-Core Universal Processor to Market
Tachyum Inc. reported that it has finalized a Series-A funding round. The funding round was led by private equity investor IPM Group, with the participation of the Slovak Government. The funding will be used to continue the advancement of the company's efforts to bring its Prodigy Universal Processor chip to market.
The company plans to use the money to help the development team reach their next important milestone in early 2020 with the intention of bringing the Prodigy chip to market in the second half of 2020.
Closing of this equity investment round was key to support its R&D and software development both in Slovakia and USA, leveraging regional talent and resources of Slovakia, the European Union, as well as Silicon Valley, the company indicated. Tachyum says its rapidly expanding Slovakian R&D center plays a critical role in the development required to lead the AI revolution, to build machines more powerful than the human brain, and to deliver AI for good and AI for all.
Tachyum claims that the Prodigy Universal Processor Chip is the smallest and fastest general purpose, 64-core processor developed to date and says it requires 10x less processor power and reduces processor cost by 3x. Prodigy also reduces data center TCO (annual total cost of ownership) by 4x, according to the company.
It leverages an innovative hardware architecture and a smart compiler that has made many parts of the hardware found in a typical redundant processor. A smaller, simpler core with fewer wires and shorter wires translates into much higher speed and improved power efficiency for the processor.
The Prodigy Universal Processor Chip will enable an Exaflop supercomputer using just 250,000 Prodigy processors, the company asserts. According to Tachyum, Prodigy also provides a path to allow users to simulate, in real-time, human brain-sized neural nets beginning in 2020, instead of the industry-projected 2028.
"The work that Tachyum is doing is highly disruptive and will lead to dramatic improvements in burgeoning markets of artificial intelligence and high-performance computing that require extreme processing speeds and power efficiencies," said Adrian Vycital, Managing Partner at IPM Group, Tachyum's lead investor based in London and Bratislava. "Supporting Tachyum at this stage of their development provides cascading opportunities for unprecedented success, helping them to establish themselves as the leader in what truly is the future of computing."
Tachyum was launched in 2016 to overcome the performance plateau in nanometer-class processor chips and the systems they power. The company says that in its short time in existence, it has unlocked unprecedented performance, power efficiency, and cost advantages to resolve the most complex problems in big data analytics, deep learning, mobile, and large-scale computing.
As part of a best-practices approach to developing Prodigy, the company is attracting, hiring, and retaining world-class talent to work at both of its wholly-owned subsidiaries, located in Silicon Valley and Slovakia respectively.
"We are extremely pleased to announce another infusion of working capital into Tachyum, which not only enables us to complete our mission of delivering disruptive products to market but also represents well-reasoned confidence in our approach to overcoming challenges faced by the industry," said Dr. Radoslav Danilak, Co-founder and CEO of Tachyum. "The ability to change the world takes more than one man's vision. Having an investment community backing Tachyum allows us to properly build a world-class organization with the best and brightest talent available. We look forward to growing the company and the industry atop the foundation that we've already built."
