OpenAI's Jalapeño chip: AI helped design it in 9 months, then tuned kernels to 88.94% of peak

创业邦 · wechat · 2026-09-18

OpenAI has disclosed first results for its in-house inference chip Jalapeño, which went from initial design to fabrication in just 9 months with an internal team averaging under 100 people, while Broadcom handled much of the physical design and manufacturing work.

AI played a central role in development. The team used Google's XLS toolchain to translate chip design into software-like problems AI models handle well, running a feedback loop of engineer-set constraints, model-generated code, and tool verification to speed up speed/power/area tradeoffs. After first silicon arrived in May, internal models optimized programs running on the chip: an attention kernel improved from 0.31% of theoretical peak to 88.94% in about 40 hours. Using AI coding tools, the team also brought three open-weight models not in the original production plan to high performance within two months.

The deeper shift: chips are now being designed for AI programmers too—keeping architecture clear and behavior predictable so AI can continuously write kernels and tune performance, cutting the long-term software maintenance cost of custom silicon. Deployment is planned to begin by year-end.

Original post →

OpenAI's Jalapeño chip: AI helped design it in 9 months, then tuned kernels to 88.94% of peak

More from coding & agent