Google Cloud is expanding its TPU lineup with TPU 8tx for secure AI workloads and TPU 8i Max for higher-capacity inference with large context windows.

Google Cloud on Monday expanded its Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) family with two new chips: a more secure version of its TPU 8t accelerator and a higher-capacity version of its TPU 8i inference chip. The company says the processors respond to demand for AI inference.

The new chips address two emerging enterprise requirements: stronger protection for sensitive AI workloads and better performance for agentic AI applications with large context windows, said Mark Lohmeyer, vice president and general manager of AI and computing infrastructure at Google Cloud.

The announcements build on Google Cloud's eighth-generation TPU chips, introduced in April. At that time, the company launched TPU 8t for training, which it said delivers up to 2.7 times better training performance than the prior generation, and TPU 8i for inference, which it said offers 80% better inference price-performance.

**TPU 8tx Adds Security; TPU 8i Max Boosts Capacity**

One of the new accelerators, TPU 8tx, is built on the same silicon as TPU 8t and adds hardware-level encryption for secure inference and small-scale training. The chip is paired with custom AMD CPU hosts to help protect and isolate sensitive data and model weights, even while inference is actively running, Lohmeyer said during a media briefing.

Google Cloud also introduced TPU 8i Max, a variant aimed at enterprises running increasingly agentic workloads with large context windows. Lohmeyer said the chip is intended to address memory constraints by effectively "adding more lanes to the highway."

To create TPU 8i Max, Google Cloud combined two TPU 8i chips into a single package, doubling compute, SRAM, and HBM bandwidth compared with TPU 8i, the company said. TPU 8i Max delivers 384 GB of high-bandwidth memory, Lohmeyer said.

"We're just seeing tremendous demand for the TPU platform and systems," Lohmeyer said during the briefing. He added that Google Cloud is also seeing a broadening of AI use cases, including demand for confidential computing and for agentic inference with very large context windows while maintaining strong performance.

**Custom TPUs Could Sharpen Google Cloud's Edge**

Dave McCarthy, group vice president at IDC, said Google Cloud's move toward more specialized custom AI chips could help it further differentiate itself from rival cloud providers.

"The fact that Google was able to launch the 8i and 8t earlier this year, and now they're coming out with these new ones within the same calendar year, is just showing the pace of innovation," McCarthy said. "They're showing their commitment to R&D to build this stuff. And if what they're saying is true – twice the bandwidth, all these new features – that's showing they're potentially outpacing the competition in terms of new product releases."

McCarthy described confidential computing as an emerging requirement for AI workloads. Cloud providers have traditionally focused on protecting data in transit and at rest, he said, whereas confidential computing is intended to protect data in use.

"If Google can come out with a strong confidential compute story, it kind of gives them a little bit of an edge," said McCarthy, adding that Nvidia is still developing its strategy in this area.

Google Cloud also said TPU 8i Max allows more silicon to fit within an existing rack footprint, enabling significantly more computing power per square foot and per watt in its data centers.

That could help Google Cloud increase capacity without adding more racks or building more data centers, at least in the near term, potentially easing some of the capacity pressures facing the industry, McCarthy said.

More broadly, McCarthy said Google Cloud's strategy of continually enhancing its silicon and making TPUs available through other providers could expand the company's market reach while creating an additional revenue stream.

Oracle recently announced it would make TPU chips available to customers of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. During the media briefing, Lohmeyer also said Google Cloud would allow select customers to deploy the TPU 8tx in their own data centers.