SiTime Corporation the Precision Timing company, announced the Elite 2 Super-TCXO to increase GPU utilisation and compute efficiency in AI data centres by delivering better time synchronisation. The product targets a $1.5 billion cumulative market by 2030.
“Industry reports show GPU utilization in AI clusters can be as low as 20 to 40% – a large and largely hidden tax on AI infrastructure,” said Piyush Sevalia, chief business officer at SiTime. “AI workloads are distributed across GPUs in tightly orchestrated time slots. Even small timing errors force waits cycles to avoid data corruption, and in extreme cases can trigger GPU timeouts and system restarts. Poor synchronisation directly caps GPU utilisation.”
Sevalia continued, “To address this, the industry is driving towards a target of 10 nanoseconds time synchronisation across an AI cluster, down from 1 microsecond today. We collaborated closely with leading AI system architects at hyperscale’s and silicon providers and concluded that the right oscillator can significantly improve cluster wide synchronisation. That’s why we developed the Elite 2 Super-TCXO. The device delivers sub-nanosecond synchronisation, 10X better than target, which is enabled by its exceptional thermal and short-term stability. With these characteristics, Elite 2 minimises time errors between GPUs, unlocking higher system utilisation, greater throughput and better performance per watt. This is the result of SiTime leadership and systems thinking, applied to one of AI’s hardest problems.”
“AI networks must operate with extremely high efficiency to fully utilise expensive GPU resources,” said Sameh Boujelbene, vice president at Dell’Oro Group. “As AI back-end infrastructure refreshes at a much faster cadence than traditional non-accelerated infrastructure, time synchronization accuracy becomes increasingly important to sustaining performance across rapidly evolving data centre architectures.”
Elite 2 Super-TCXO delivers better synchronisation in the industry’s smallest footprint
Key features:
- 1 ns time synchronisation accuracy – up to 100X better
- ±2 ppb/°C dF/dT (frequency temperature slope) – up to 25X better
- 6 × 10⁻¹² Allan Deviation (ADEV) – up to 8X lower
- ±50 ppb frequency stability over -40 to 105°C – up to 4X better
- 3.2 × 2.5mm (8mm) footprint – up to 2X smaller
- Digital frequency tuning simplifies timing-aware network design
- Eliminates activity dips and micro jumps inherent in quartz technology
- Resistant to shock, vibration and board bending
