News Microsoft Reveals Custom 128-Core Arm Datacenter CPU, Massive Maia 100 GPU Designed for AI

[Admin]

Microsoft has two custom chips designed for AI workloads: the Azure Maia AI Accelerator and Azure Cobalt CPU.

Microsoft Reveals Custom 128-Core Arm Datacenter CPU, Massive Maia 100 GPU Designed for AI : Read more

 

[bit_user]

This article is sadly lacking some key specifics. I found the SemiAnalysis article much better. For instance:

Microsoft told Tom's Hardware. "The 64-bit 128-core chip represents performance improvements of up to 40% over current generations of Azure Arm servers."

Okay, so what are the specs of the current generation of Azure Arm servers?

"The Azure Cobalt 100 CPU is Microsoft’s 2nd Arm based CPU that they have deployed in their cloud. It is already being used for internal Microsoft products such as Azure SQL servers and Microsoft Teams. The first Arm based CPU Microsoft deployed was a Neoverse N1 based CPU purchased from Ampere Computing."
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And specifically what did Microsoft license from ARM, for this generation?

"The Cobalt 100 CPU evolves from that and brings 128 Neoverse N2 cores on Armv9 and 12 channels of DDR5. Neoverse N2 brings 40% higher performance versus Neoverse N1."
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Source: https://www.semianalysis.com/p/microsoft-infrastructure-ai-and-cpu

 

[bit_user]

as well as comparative newcomers like Ampere, are likely to be impacted by these announcements and will have to make bold moves of their own.

Ampere already launched its Ampere One CPUs, which are a successor to their Altra CPUs. Unlike the Altra, One uses a custom core design. Probably, they should've just kept using ARM's own designs, because the performance data they've published doesn't seem terribly compelling.