Microsoft could team up with AMD | | | | Turtles AI

  According to sources familiar with the matter, #Microsoft Corp. is collaborating with Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (#AMD) to expand the chipmaker's footprint in the #AI processor market. The move is part of a broader strategy to secure more of the highly coveted components and offer an alternative to #Nvidia Corp., which currently dominates the market for AI-capable chips known as graphics processing units (#GPU). The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, disclosed that Microsoft is providing support to boost AMD's efforts, including engineering resources. Additionally, the two companies are working together on a new homegrown Microsoft processor for AI workloads, code-named #Athena. The software giant's collaboration with AMD is aimed at creating partly customized chips for its biggest customers to use in their AI data centers. AMD CEO, Lisa Su, claims that the company is well-positioned to create specialized chips for AI workloads. "I think we have a very complete IP portfolio across CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, adaptive SoCs, DPUs, and a very capable semi-custom team," said Su, adding that the company is seeing "higher volume opportunities beyond game consoles." AMD is confident that its upcoming Instinct MI300 data center chip could be adapted for generative AI workloads. "MI300 is actually very well-positioned for both HPC or supercomputing workloads as well as for AI workloads," said Su. "And with the recent interest in generative AI, I would say the pipeline for MI300 has expanded considerably here over the last few months, and we're excited about that. We're putting in a lot more resources." However, Microsoft isn't severing ties with Nvidia as it continues to secure more of the company's processors. The AI boom has created a growing shortage of specialized GPU chips, and Nvidia has a near monopoly on the supply of such hardware. Microsoft and AMD aren't the only players developing in-house AI chips. Google has its own TPU (Tensor Processing Unit) chip for training its AI models, and Amazon has similarly created Trainium AI chips to train machine learning computer models. The collaboration between Microsoft and AMD is part of a larger effort by tech companies to create their own specialized chips for AI workloads, reducing their dependence on a small number of suppliers. The AI market is expected to grow rapidly in the coming years, and companies that can offer competitive and tailored solutions will have a significant advantage.