Tachyum announced a successful demonstration of System Management Mode (SMM) on its Prodigy Universal Processor, marking a key milestone in the chip’s readiness for enterprise and data center deployment. The test confirmed Prodigy’s ability to handle privileged system functions—including thermal and power management, memory initialization, and hardware-level control—through a dedicated System Management Interrupt (SMI) and secure SMM firmware. These functions operate independently from the OS, using protected on-chip SRAM and managed by UEFI.
This SMM validation confirms Prodigy’s capability to operate in an isolated processor environment with elevated privileges, essential for secure and efficient system control in high-performance computing environments. Tachyum engineers demonstrated the CPU’s ability to read thermal data from embedded sensors and autonomously adjust thermal zones via a custom SMM software interface integrated with Tachyum Linux OS. The company is developing a dedicated privilege mode for SMM to enhance system availability and safety.
Prodigy is designed to unify CPU, GPU, and TPU functionality on a single chip, targeting AI, HPC, and cloud workloads with 256 custom 64-bit cores. Tachyum claims the chip can deliver up to 18x the performance of leading AI GPUs and significantly reduce data center CAPEX and OPEX by eliminating the need for specialized hardware.
- Tachyum validates SMM and SMI functionality on Prodigy Universal Processor
- Demonstration shows independent hardware management, thermal control, and firmware-level execution
- SMM interface integrated with Tachyum Linux for OS-level temperature management
- Prodigy unifies CPU/GPU/TPU roles with 256 64-bit cores on a single chip
- Targeting AI, cloud, and HPC workloads with high efficiency and reduced total cost
“SMM and SMI are essential components of a mature processor architecture, and this demonstration signals that Prodigy is able to perform crucial management functions,” said Dr. Radoslav Danilak, founder and CEO of Tachyum.
- Tachyum is headquartered in Las Vegas, Nevada, and was founded by Dr. Radoslav Danilak, a seasoned technologist who previously co-founded SandForce (acquired by LSI and later by Seagate) and holds over 100 patents in semiconductor design. The company’s mission is to dramatically improve data center efficiency by delivering a universal processor that consolidates CPU, GPU, and TPU capabilities into a single chip architecture. Its flagship product, the Prodigy Universal Processor, features 256 custom-designed 64-bit cores and is designed to handle general-purpose, AI, and HPC workloads on a single homogeneous platform. Prodigy aims to reduce power consumption, cost, and physical footprint in data centers while delivering high computational throughput. Major milestones include completing Prodigy’s instruction set architecture, launching its FPGA-based emulation platform, validating system management mode (SMM), and securing a significant order for a system capable of delivering over 50 exaflops of performance—positioning Tachyum as a contender in the race for next-generation exascale and AI supercomputing.