I haven’t worked on GPU design, or looked into tensor cores specifically, but I did study VSLI design in uni. Basically, even if there are nominal similarities between some of the operations shared between the types of cores, the actual silicon designs will differ based on the expected workloads that each type of designed for. Tensor cores will have silicon layouts optimized for tensor operations, and graphics cores will have silicon layouts optimized for matrix operations (and other overhead). There’s a lot that goes into this at the nanometer scale (in 3D), and it’s way beyond the scope of a reddit comment to describe. I suggest finding a random VLSI textbook and reading about silicon geometries and how things like logic gate are actually implemented on a fab level.
I haven’t worked on GPU design, or looked into tensor cores specifically, but I did study VSLI design in uni. Basically, even if there are nominal similarities between some of the operations shared between the types of cores, the actual silicon designs will differ based on the expected workloads that each type of designed for. Tensor cores will have silicon layouts optimized for tensor operations, and graphics cores will have silicon layouts optimized for matrix operations (and other overhead). There’s a lot that goes into this at the nanometer scale (in 3D), and it’s way beyond the scope of a reddit comment to describe. I suggest finding a random VLSI textbook and reading about silicon geometries and how things like logic gate are actually implemented on a fab level.