Microsoft makes its own chip for running AI models

Microsoft has created its own chip for running AI workloads. The Maia 100 is made on TSMC’s 5nm process and has 105 billion transistors. The company will start using the chip from next year.

From next year, the Maia 100 will, among other things, perform tasks in data centers for Microsoft’s collaboration with ChatGPT maker OpenAI, reports Microsoft. In recent years, the chips needed for training large language models and other AI tasks have been difficult to obtain. Microsoft says it has been working on the chip for years. The Maia chips go into a separately designed rack with built-in cooling to keep the Maia chips cool.

In addition to the Maia 100, Microsoft will also use the Cobalt 100 CPU. This is a self-developed Arm processor for use in data centers. It has 128 processor cores and uses Arm Neoverse CSS. Microsoft does not want to release exact specs or benchmarks of the chips.