OpenAI Unveils Custom Inference Chip Jalapeño With Efficiency Gains

OpenAI on Tuesday unveiled its first custom inference chip, codenamed Jalapeño, presenting benchmark results at the Hot Chips conference that claim significant performance advantages over Nvidia's current systems. The company said the chip, developed in collaboration with Broadcom, is designed exclusively for running AI models and aims to deliver more AI work per watt while reducing response times. In tests using the public InferenceX benchmark from SemiAnalysis, OpenAI reported that Jalapeño achieved 1.5 to 1.9 times more AI work per watt at peak throughput and 1.7 to 3.6 times lower end-to-end latency compared to Nvidia's GB200 and GB300 systems.