Tensix Grid Playground

Explore the Tenstorrent Tensix chip architecture interactively. Each scene below animates a different concept — click ▶ to play or ⏭ to step through frame by frame.

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Parallelism: Amdahl's Law in Action

Watch how adding more Tensix cores increases throughput. Even with a 10% serial fraction, 64 cores yield 21× speedup. The colors show which cores are actively computing vs. idle.

Key insight: Amdahl's Law: Speedup = 1 / (S + P/N) where S = serial fraction, P = parallel fraction, N = number of processors. Even 10% serial work caps maximum speedup at 10×.

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NOC Routing: Data Travels the Mesh

The Network-on-Chip (NOC) is a 2D torus mesh. Data tiles travel from source to destination using row-first routing — horizontal first, then vertical.

Key insight: Two independent NOC planes (NOC0 and NOC1) allow simultaneous bidirectional transfers — no contention for opposite-direction traffic.

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Kernel Dispatch: Compute + Data Movement Threads

Each Tensix core runs two independent RISC-V thread groups simultaneously: compute (yellow) handles math operations while data movement (pink) handles NOC reads/writes. They communicate via lock-free circular buffers (Dataflow Buffers).

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Blackhole Architecture

The P100/P150/P300c (Blackhole) chip has a wider grid than Wormhole. The same programming model applies — compute cores in the center, DRAM controllers on the edges, Ethernet links for multi-chip connectivity.

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How to Use the Visualizer in Your Own Lessons

Add a tensix_viz code block to any lesson markdown:

```tensix_viz arch=wormhole
[
  { "step": "highlight", "cores": [[1,1]], "label": "Start here" },
  { "step": "transfer", "from": [1,1], "to": [4,4] },
  { "step": "pause", "ms": 500 }
]
```

Available step types:

Step	Parameters	Description
highlight	cores, color, label, ms	Pulse-animate a set of cores
unhighlight	cores (optional)	Remove highlights
transfer	from, to, ms	Animate a tile packet along the NOC
heatmap	data (2D array), ms	Per-core utilization overlay
label	core, text	Place a persistent label on a core
clear	what (optional)	Clear highlights / labels / heatmap
pause	ms	Wait before next step

Color names: tensixActive (teal), pink, teal, gold, green, red

Architectures: wormhole (8×8 compute grid), blackhole (15×10 compute grid)