Microsoft offers cloud customers AMD alternative to Nvidia AI processors.
Microsoft said Thursday it plans to offer its cloud computing customers a platform of AMD artificial intelligence chips that will compete with components made by Nvidia, details of which will be revealed at its Build developer conference next week. will be given
It will also preview the new Cobalt 100 custom processors at the conference.
Clusters of Microsoft’s Advanced Micro Devices flagship MI300X AI chips will be sold through its Azure cloud computing service. They will give customers an alternative to Nvidia’s H100 family of powerful graphics processing units (GPUs) that dominate the data center chip market for AI but can be difficult to obtain due to high demand.
To build AI models or run applications, companies typically must string together — or cluster — multiple GPUs because the data and computations won’t fit on a single processor.
AMD, which expects $4 billion in Artificial intelligence (AI) chip revenue this year, has said the chips are powerful enough to train and run large AI models.
Alongside Nvidia’s top-shelf AI chips, Microsoft’s cloud computing unit sells access to its in-house AI chips called Maia.
Separately, Microsoft plans to preview next week Cobalt 100 processors that offer 40 percent better performance than other processors based on Arm Holdings’ technology, the company said. Snowflake and others have started using them.
The Cobalt chips, which were announced in November, are being tested for PowerTeams, Microsoft’s business messaging tool, and to compete with in-house Graviton CPUs made by Amazon.com. is in position.
