Microsoft Holds Chip Makers' Feet To The Fire With Homegrown CPU And AI Chips
The Next Platform, Wednesday, November 15,2023
After many years of rumors, Microsoft has finally confirmed that it is following rivals Amazon Web Services and Google into the design of custom processors and accelerators for their clouds. That confirmation came today as Satya Nadella, Microsoft's chief executive officer, announced the Cobalt 100 Arm server CPU and the Maia 100 AI accelerator chip.
The move is a surprise to precisely no one, because even if Microsoft does not deploy very many of its own chips, the very fact that they exist means it can negotiate for better pricing from chip makers Intel, AMD, and Nvidia. It is like spending hundreds of millions of dollars to save billions, which can be reinvested back into the infrastructure, including further development of homegrown chippery. Particularly at the relative high cost of X86 server CPUs and the outrageous pricing for Nvidia 'Hopper' H100 and H200 GPU accelerators and, we presume, for the forthcoming AMD 'Antares' Instinct MI300X and MI300A GPU accelerators. With supplies limited and demand far in excess of supply, there is no incentive at all for AMD to undercut Nvidia on price with datacenter GPUs unless the hyperscalers and cloud builders give them one.