The Information has been in contact with sources who claim that Microsoft is developing its own powerful chip that can replace, or complement, the AI chips it currently buys from Nvidia.
Microsoft’s AI chip is said to be codenamed Athena and, according to The Information, development began in 2019, at the same time Microsoft started investing in AI company OpenAI. According to the reports, Athena will be based on Taiwan Semiconductor’s (TSMC) 5-nanometer process and has already started being used by a small number of AI developers at Microsoft and OpenAI.
Google and Amazon have previously developed their own chips The fact that Microsoft is developing its own chip models to handle large amounts of data for artificial intelligences is probably not surprising. Competitors like Google, Amazon, and Meta have also previously developed their own chips for use in their AI applications and other areas. However, Nvidia is still the world leader in the field and is said to have around 90 percent of the market for the powerful chips used to train and run AI applications.
