Japan’s government has enlisted Silicon Valley AI chip startup Tenstorrent to train 200 Japanese chip designers over five years at the company’s U.S. offices. This initiative, announced Tuesday, involves a $50 million contract split between Tenstorrent and Japan’s Leading-edge Semiconductor Technology Center, signaling Japan’s drive to revitalize its semiconductor sector. Once a dominant force in the global chip market, Japan’s share has dwindled from over half in the 1980s to under 10% today.
Central to these revitalization efforts is Rapidus, a government-supported contract chipmaker. With aspirations of mass-producing advanced semiconductors by 2027, Rapidus requires clients interested in having their chip designs manufactured. The agreement with Tenstorrent aims to foster those future customers. This collaboration builds on a previous partnership between Tenstorrent and Rapidus, where they started developing designs suited for Rapidus’s facilities. The hands-on training of Japanese engineers in the U.S. intends to disseminate this expertise throughout Japan’s chip industry.
David Bennett, Tenstorrent’s Chief Customer Officer, emphasized Japan’s determination to secure control over its technological future. Beginning in April 2025, engineers will collaborate with prominent figures at Tenstorrent, including Jim Keller and Wei-Han Lien, who are credited with designing chips for Apple, and Yasuo Ishii, a former Arm Holdings veteran.
Although Tenstorrent will retain the blueprints produced during this program, the designs will employ RISC-V, an open and free chip design technology. Upon returning to Japan, the trained engineers will apply their newly acquired skills to develop RISC-V-based designs domestically.
Featured image courtesy of TechCrunch
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