Tesla's New Layout for 2nm AI Chip Production: Samsung and TSMC to Share AI6 and AI6.5 Orders
Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently revealed a detailed roadmap for the next generation of AI chips on the X platform. Following the successful taping of the AI5 chip at Samsung, the AI6 and AI6.5 2nm chips will be produced by Samsung and TSMC respectively at their US factories.
Musk confirmed that the AI5 chip made several design compromises to accelerate progress, but he was pleased that it was ultimately completed 45 days ahead of schedule.
The upcoming AI6 chip will address these shortcomings. The AI6 will use Samsung's 2nm process in Texas, paired with the LPDDR6 memory standard, offering double the performance of the AI5.
Following the AI6, Tesla plans a further optimized AI6.5 version, which will use TSMC's Arizona factory's 2nm process, further enhancing performance over the AI6.
A key design improvement for both AI6 and AI6.5 is halving the number of TRIP AI computing accelerators dedicated to SRAM. This results in effective memory bandwidth for any computation within the SRAM cache being an order of magnitude higher than DRAM bandwidth.
Tesla's head of AI hardware and inference software stated that removing legacy modules from Tesla's previous intellectual property will create more efficient and optimized chips for Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI's future AI projects.
The AI5 is currently co-produced by Samsung and TSMC and is expected to enter mass production from 2026 to 2027. The target timeframe for AI6 and AI6.5 is 2027 to 2029.