According to foreign media The Information reports, Microsoft is about to unveil its own AI chip next month, thus helping to reduce the dependence on NVIDIA GPU.
The foreign media claimed that the AI chip codenamed Athena, Microsoft is expected to announce this self-developed chip on November 14th-11th 17th Ignite developer conference. According to the public agenda of Ignite 2023, one of the main focuses of this year’s conference is to integrate AI into the environment.
The Information
The OpenAI’s ChatGPT has triggered an AI windstorm, driving the industry’s high demand for NVIDIA’s GPUs, which were once in short supply, and Microsoft’s Azure AI service, as well as Bing Chat, Bing Creator, and Copilot, all run on NVIDIA. Microsoft’s Azure AI services, as well as Bing Chat, Bing Creator, and Copilot, all run on NVIDIA’s H100 GPU series.
Microsoft is now developing its own AI chips, which will help save the cost of purchasing GPUs from NVIDIA and reduce its dependence on NVIDIA.
According to The Information’s report earlier this year, Microsoft actually launched the Athena project in 2019, and so far 300 people have been invested in the development of the relevant project. The Athena project has already planned a roadmap, and the first generation may be produced by TSMC’s 5-nanometer production process, it is said that some Microsoft and OpenAI employees have already obtained Athena’s engineering samples.
In order to enhance product autonomy, not only Microsoft wants to develop its own AI chips, but also industry giants such as Google and Amazon have long launched their own AI chips. On the other hand, the industry’s AI fever has also benefited NVIDIA, with an overall revenue of $11.33 billion in Q2 this year (currently about RMB 82.822 billion).
