It has introduced a massively parallel Intelligence Processing Unit (IPU) that holds the complete machine learning model inside the processor.
[12][13] In 2016, Graphcore announced the world's first graph tool chain designed for machine intelligence called Poplar Software Stack.
[14][15][16] In July 2017, Graphcore announced its first chip, called the Colossus GC2, a "16 nm massively parallel, mixed-precision floating point processor", that became available in 2018.
[17][18] Packaged with two chips on a single PCI Express card, called the Graphcore C2 IPU (an Intelligence Processing Unit), it is stated to perform the same role as a GPU in conjunction with standard machine learning frameworks such as TensorFlow.
[26] Code and data executed locally must fit in a tile, but with message-passing, all on-chip or off-chip memory can be used, and software for AI makes it transparently possible,[clarification needed] e.g. has PyTorch support.