Devoting a portion of the silicon in Broadcom's Trident networking processors to AI improves the chip's efficiency and its ability to handle other tasks such as network security. The chip, called a Trident 5-X12, can help alleviate some of the network traffic congestion, Robin Grindley, an executive in Broadcom's Core Switching Group, said in an interview. The AI portion of the chip can be turned on after a customer builds an AI model based on the traffic in their data center. Once constructed, a form of the model is fed into the chip and it can help route the traffic. The new version of the Trident is built with 5 nanometer manufacturing technology and is currently shipping to "qualified" customers.

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Persons: Mike Blake, Robin Grindley, Grindley, Max A, Sonali Paul Organizations: Broadcom, REUTERS, Tech, Trident, Engineers, Thomson Locations: Rancho Bernardo, California, San Francisco