SAN FRANCISCO, July 15 (Reuters) - Broadcom's ( AVGO )

chip unit unveiled on Tuesday a new networking processor that

aims to speed artificial intelligence data crunching, which

requires stringing together hundreds of chips that work

together.

The new chip is the latest piece of hardware that Broadcom ( AVGO )

has brought to bear against rival AI giant Nvidia ( NVDA ).

Broadcom ( AVGO ) helps Alphabet's Google produce its AI chips,

which are perceived by developers and industry experts as one of

the few viable alternatives to Nvidia's ( NVDA ) powerful graphics

processors (GPUs).

Dubbed the Tomahawk Ultra, Broadcom's ( AVGO ) chip acts as a traffic

controller for data whizzing between dozens or hundreds of chips

that sit relatively closely together inside a data center, such

as inside a single server rack.

The chip aims to compete with Nvidia's ( NVDA ) NVLink Switch chip

which has a similar purpose, but the Tomahawk Ultra can tie

together four times the number of chips, Ram Velaga, a Broadcom ( AVGO )

senior vice president, told Reuters in an interview. And instead

of a proprietary protocol to move the data, it uses a

boosted-for-speed version of ethernet.

Both companies' chips help data center builders and others

tie as many chips as possible together within a few feet of each

other, a technique the industry calls "scale-up" computing. By

ensuring close-by chips can communicate with each other quickly,

software developers can summon the computing horsepower

necessary for AI.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing ( TSM ) will

manufacture the Ultra line of processors with its five

nano-meter process, Velaga said. The processor is now shipping.

It took Broadcom's ( AVGO ) teams of engineers roughly three years to

develop the design, which was originally built for a segment of

the market known as high-performance computing. But as

generative AI boomed, Broadcom ( AVGO ) adapted the chip for use by AI

companies because it is suited to scaling up.