Google TPU 8 vs Nvidia: 8t and 8i Specs Explained

TL;DR: Google's TPU 8 is not one chip. It is two: an 8t for training and an 8i for inference. The 121 ExaFlops number is the headline. The split is the story. It is the quietest way possible for the biggest buyer of AI compute to tell Nvidia that the universal-GPU era is over. Why did Google split the TPU 8 into 8t and 8i? Every prior TPU generation has been one chip. So is every Nvidia GPU people argue about. One die, one package, one SKU, rented to you for both the weeks-long training run and