In a recent article by Bloomberg, Citing anonymous sources, it is assumed AMD is involved in Microsoft’s Athena project to develop a proprietary artificial intelligence chip. The two companies are reportedly working together to steal market share from NVIDIA.
We brought these back to you last month Information shared by The Information who have seen Microsoft work on an AI chip since then 2019. Additionally, the hardware would be used by a small subset of employees who would be testing it, although it appears Microsoft is already focusing on the next-gen.
However, more details have recently become known: According to Bloomberg sources, AMD is said to be involved in the development. In particular, the American chip manufacturer would be ready to advance into the field of artificial intelligence with its own solutions.
Indeed, the collaboration appears to envisage one financial support from Microsoft to support AMD’s technology development. AMD, for its part, would have made its know-how available to Microsoft for further development a customized version of the chip under Project Athena.
The goal of both companies is to reduce the industry’s dependence on NVIDIA solutions. On the one hand, AMD could expand its business by acquiring new market share. On the other hand pointed out Dylan Patel by SemiAnalysis, Microsoft could save up to a third of the cost of AI chips.
Indeed, currently the implementation of ChatGPT in Bingfor example, and other AI-powered features from Microsoft require the use of the chips NVIDIA A100 and H100. Considering that the adoption of AI is expected to accelerate in the coming years and consequently increase the need for dedicated chips, the long-term savings for Microsoft could be significant.
At the moment, as you can imagine, there is still no confirmation, neither from AMD nor from Microsoft. However, it seems that hundreds of people are involved in the developmentbut there is no concrete news about it yet. We will keep you informed of further developments.
