ELI5: What makes AI chips fast?

AI chips are fast because they are built specially to do lots of simple math tasks all at the same time, like many tiny chefs chopping veggies super quickly.

Imagine you're throwing a pizza party.

• Regular chips (like in your phone or computer) are like one really good chef. This chef can make a whole pizza by themselves, but it takes time because they have to do everything one step at a time: make the dough, chop the veggies, add the sauce, and bake it.
• AI chips are like having a whole bunch of tiny chefs, each only doing one small thing. One chef chops tomatoes, another chops peppers, another spreads the sauce, and another puts on the cheese. Because they're all working at the same time, they can get all the pizzas ready much faster.

• AI tasks like recognizing your face in a photo or understanding what you say to your smart speaker involve millions of small calculations.
• AI chips are designed to do these calculations simultaneously (at the same time). Think of it as all those tiny chefs working together on all those pizza toppings at once.
• Specialized design: Regular chips are good at doing a bit of everything, but AI chips are optimized to do only the kinds of math that AI needs really, really fast. This is like how those tiny chefs are only good at chopping or spreading sauce, they don't have to know how to do anything else.