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BlackholeTenstorrent—BlackholeTenstorrent—
Blackhole
Courtesy of Tenstorrent · Press kit, editorial use (opens tenstorrent.com)

Blackhole

by TenstorrentCAUS

DeployStage 4 of 5

Blackhole cards and workstations shipping to developers.

Updated 30 Jun 2026Checked 25 Sep0 updates this week

Milestones

No announced next step
  1. Grayskull developer cards2023Complete.
  2. Wormhole cards on saleJul 2024Complete.
  3. Blackhole cards shipping2025Complete.

Most important updates

  • 30 Jun 2026
  • 1 May 2026
  • Aug 2024

Current obstacles

  • Software maturityA new chip design needs software good enough that developers get top speed without hand-tuning.

Physics limits

  • Mesh paths grow with system sizeWithout switches, data hops chip to chip. In a 2D mesh the number of hops grows with the square root of chip count, adding delay and congestion for traffic that must reach every chip.
  • GDDR is far slower than HBMGDDR6 gives about 0.5 TB/s per chip against several TB/s for HBM stacks. For large models memory speed, not arithmetic, sets how fast tokens come out.
  • Electrical links are short and costlyHigh-speed copper links cost several picojoules per bit and reach only metres, so as systems grow, a rising share of power goes into moving data between chips.

How it works

3 parts
GDDR6 memory chips beside a graphics processor, not Tenstorrent: Blackhole uses this cheaper board memory instead of HBM stacks
GDDR6 memory chips beside a graphics processor, not Tenstorrent: Blackhole uses this cheaper board memory instead of HBM stacksPhoto: Inobump · CC0 (opens commons.wikimedia.org)
Cores

Tensix cores plus RISC-V

140 Tensix cores do the matrix maths, each steered by small RISC-V CPUs. 16 larger RISC-V cores on the chip can run Linux.

Network

Ethernet on the chip

Built-in Ethernet ports let chips connect straight into a mesh, so large systems need no separate network switches.

Memory

GDDR6 instead of HBM

32 GB of GDDR6 per chip keeps cost down. The low-level software (TT-Metalium) is open source.

Update log

3 updates

Tue 30 Jun

  • Minor: BlogTest

Fri 1 May

  • Major: BlogHardware

Aug 2024

  • Minor: PressHardware

About Tenstorrent

The team behind Blackhole

Tenstorrent

RISC-V AI chips, chip designs for licence

Tenstorrent designs AI chips and licenses its chip designs to partners building their own, including in Japan and Korea. It is led by famed chip architect Jim Keller and open-sources much of its software.

  • Raised a $693M Series D in December 2024 led by Samsung Securities and AFW Partners.
  • Releases its software and some hardware designs as open source.
  • Partner of Rapidus and Japan's LSTC on 2 nm-class AI chips.

tenstorrent.com (opens tenstorrent.com)Company profile →

Founded
201610 yrs
Headquarters
CanadaUnited States
Status
Private
Valuation
$2.6BprivateDec 2024
Raised
$693M1 round
Last round
Series D · $693MDec 2024$2.6B post
Works in
ComputingAI chips
Coverage
1 program · 5 updateslatest 30 Jun 2026checked 25 Sep
Lead investors
Samsung SecuritiesAFW Partners
People
Jim KellerCEOLjubisa BajicFounder (former CEO)
Primer