Microsoft is rolling out its second-generation AI chip, the Maia 200, as the company seeks to improve efficiency across its cloud and AI services while reducing dependence on Nvidia hardware.
The processor is being manufactured by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing and deployed to Microsoft data centers in Iowa, with additional rollouts planned for the Phoenix area.
Some of the first chips will be allocated to Microsoft’s superintelligence team to generate data for future AI model development, cloud and AI chief Scott Guthrie said in a blog post.
The Maia 200 will also power Copilot for business customers and support AI models, including those from OpenAI, offered through Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform.
Microsoft began developing its own chips years after Amazon and Alphabet launched internal silicon efforts aimed at lowering costs and improving performance.
Scarcity and high prices of Nvidia’s latest processors have intensified the race among cloud providers to secure alternative sources of computing power.
The company said Maia 200 delivers stronger performance on some AI workloads than comparable chips from Amazon Web Services and Google and is the most efficient inference system Microsoft has deployed to date.
Microsoft is already designing a successor, the Maia 300, and retains access to OpenAI’s early-stage chip designs under its strategic partnership.
Microsoft shares rose nearly 2% Monday as investors positioned ahead of the company’s fiscal second-quarter earnings release on Wednesday. The software maker’s market capitalization hovered near $3.85 trillion.
Meanwhile, Nvidia shares were trading about 0.5% lower on the day as the chipmaker announced a $2 billion investment in CoreWeave.
Source: https://cryptobriefing.com/microsoft-maia-ai-chip-rollout/
