Microsoft announced the next generation of its custom AI chip on Monday and said it plans to deploy potentially more than a million of them next year to back its internal AI services.
\n\nThe Maia 300, as the chip is called, is the third generation of the company's custom chips designed to handle AI data crunching such as coding and carrying out complex business tasks on a user's behalf. Its predecessor is already running Microsoft's in-house AI models, as well as models from OpenAI delivered on Microsoft's Azure cloud computing service.
\n\nThe new version comes amid a flurry of custom chips from both cloud computing rivals and AI firms such as OpenAI aimed at loosening the hold of Nvidia on the AI computing market.
\n\nTo construct the chip, Microsoft took a different technical path from Nvidia whose AI accelerators use one massive computing chip surrounded by high-bandwidth memory chips.
\n\nThe central computing processor in Microsoft's Maia 300 silicon is composed of "chiplets" — typically specialized chips bonded together — that use 2-nanometer technology from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co for key computing functions.
\n\nOther chiplets included in the design use cheaper 3-nanometer tech for functions such as moving data off the…
Original source: https://www.cnbctv18.com/technology/
