Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI continues to pay dividends regarding the expansive flexibility artificial intelligence can play in the company’s cloud platform and services with the introduction of a new customer CPU built for cloud AI workflows.
During Microsoft’s Cloud partners conference Ignite 2023, the company took the wraps off its long-rumored data center processors Azure Maia AI Accelerator.
Maia AI Accelerator represents one of several AI-focused cloud server processors coming from Microsoft in the future and is designed specifically for AI tasks such as customizing generative AI applications, ML processes, and more.
Microsoft also talked about another ARM-based general purpose chip designed for other larger cloud workloads titled Azure Cobalt CPU.
According to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella during his opening keynote at Ignite 2023, the company intends to have their custom chips rolling out to data centers as early as next year. As a show of confidence, Microsoft also plans to use the new custom chips to run its own services such as Azure OpenAI Service, Copilot, and others.
Author Todd Bishop over at GeekWire adds a bit of context to Microsoft’s Ignite chips announcement by pointing out that, while big news in the world of Microsoft and Azure, companies such as Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud have already producing their own data center processors.
The plan, announced Wednesday at Microsoft’s Ignite conference, comes eight years after Amazon started making its own custom data center silicon through its acquisition of Annapurna Labs. Amazon Web Services has since expanded into specialized AI chips, Tranium and Inferentia, for building and running large models.
Microsoft unveils custom AI chip, with help from OpenAI, playing catch-up with Amazon
Microsoft is also playing catch-up with Google, which has developed multiple generations of its Tensor Processing Unit chips, used by Google Cloud for machine learning workloads, and is reportedly working on its own Arm-based chips.
BY TODD BISHOP
Microsoft’s multi billion dollar partnership investment in OpenAI appears to be driving a lot of the development and direction the company is catering towards and heading to in the future as well as helping shore up Azure’s cloud services stack to keep it competitive with market.