Disclaimer: Information found on CryptoreNews is those of writers quoted. It does not represent the opinions of CryptoreNews on whether to sell, buy or hold any investments. You are advised to conduct your own research before making any investment decisions. Use provided information at your own risk.
CryptoreNews covers fintech, blockchain and Bitcoin bringing you the latest crypto news and analyses on the future of money.
Microsoft has been quietly working on its own artificial intelligence (AI) chips to address the escalating development expenses associated with its internal projects and those of OpenAI, according to a report from The Information.
Allegedly in development since 2019, Microsoft’s newly disclosed hardware initiative seems aimed at diminishing the company’s dependence on Nvidia’s GPUs.
SCOOP: Microsoft has been creating an AI chip in-house since 2019, codenamed Athena.
Msft anticipates that the chip will assist in managing the costs of powering large-language models, such as the one behind OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
w/ @waynema https://t.co/m88oS1KSt7 @theinformation— Anissa Gardizy (@anissagardizy8) April 18, 2023
A search on Google indicates that the Nvidia H100, a widely used GPU for training machine learning systems, can cost up to $40,000 on resale platforms like eBay due to increasing market scarcity.
These elevated costs have compelled numerous major tech firms to create their own hardware, with Meta, Google, and Amazon all developing machine-learning chips in recent years.
Related Posts
Information remains limited as Microsoft has not provided an official statement, but The Information’s report suggests that the chips are being developed under the codename “Athena”—potentially referencing the Greek goddess of war, as the competition in generative AI intensifies.
Related: Italy ChatGPT ban: Data watchdog demands transparency to lift restriction
The report further notes that the new chips are currently being tested by members of Microsoft’s internal machine learning team and developers from OpenAI.
While it is still uncertain how OpenAI plans to utilize Microsoft’s AI chips, the company’s co-founder and CEO, Sam Altman, recently shared with an audience at MIT that the infrastructure and design that facilitated the transition from GPT-1 to GPT-4 is “played out” and will require reevaluation:
“I think we’re at the end of the era where it’s going to be these, like, giant, giant models. We’ll make them better in other ways.”
This development follows a busy news cycle for the AI industry, with Amazon recently emerging as a (somewhat) new competitor, launching its first self-developed models as part of its Bedrock AI infrastructure rollout.
Additionally, on April 17, tech entrepreneur and the world’s wealthiest individual, Elon Musk, announced the forthcoming introduction of TruthGPT, a purported “truth-seeking” large language model aimed at countering ChatGPT’s alleged left-wing bias, during an interview with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson.
