Microsoft is building its own artificial intelligence processor codenamed “Athena” that will power AI chatbots like ChatGPT.
According to the report, Microsoft has been working on the chip since 2019 and it is being tested by a limited group of Microsoft and OpenAI staff.
The chips will be used for training large-language models and enabling inference, both of which are required for generative AI, such as the one used in ChatGPT, to analyzes enormous amounts of data, recognize patterns, and generate new outputs that imitate human interaction.
According to the source, Microsoft is expecting that the chip will outperform what it now buys from other manufacturers, saving it time and money on its pricey AI projects.
Other major tech companies, such as Amazon and Google, develop their own AI chips in-house.
So far, Nvidia has dominated the market for such CPUs.
According to the article, Microsoft is hastening the distribution due to the popularity of ChatGPT.
The Windows manufacturer introduced its own AI-powered search engine, Bing AI, earlier this year, capitalising on its relationship with OpenAI and attempting to take market share from Google.