Microsoft Develops AI Server Gear To Lessen Reliance on Nvidia (reuters.com) 3
Microsoft is developing a new network card that could improve the performance of its Maia AI server chip and potentially reduce the company's reliance on chip designer Nvidia, The Information reported on Tuesday. Reuters: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has tapped Pradeep Sindhu, who co-founded networking gear developer Juniper Networks, to spearhead the network card effort, the report said citing a person with knowledge of the matter. Microsoft acquired Sindhu's server chip startup, Fungible, last year. The new network card is similar to Nvidia's ConnectX-7 card, which the chip developer sells alongside its graphic processor units (GPUs), the report added. The equipment could take more than a year to develop and, if successful, could lessen the time it takes for OpenAI to train its models on Microsoft servers as well as make the process less expensive, according to the report.
What is the advantage of a Connect X-7 (Score:2)
Re:What is the advantage of a Connect X-7 (Score:5, Informative)
It essentially is a Mellanox card. They bought Mellanox. The -7 is an up to 4 port card supporting up to 400G Ethernet/Infiniband.
It comes with all the usual Mellanox interfacing headaches with third-party vendor gear.
Who is going to fab it? (Score:4, Insightful)
All this CPU tech is great and all, but without a process node, it means nothing. I wonder who they are going to use to fab it. TSMC is backlogged for a long while on Apple's stuff. Intel is still getting up to speed. SMIC? That will be an export/import tangle.
Also, what size? Go on the bleeding edge with 2-3 nm, or go bigger? The further from the edge, the more power they will consume.