Microsoft Cranks AI Efforts Up To 11

Microsoft is justifiably proud of its hardware/software co-design approach to accelerating a wide range of data center workloads using Intel FPGAs. The company recently shared some progress in this area and subsequently announced its acquisition of the AI startup Bonsai to ease the on-ramp for building AI on Microsoft. These advances give more advantages to the Microsoft AI strategy and warrant further analysis. I believe the company is very well-positioned to lead the penetration of AI into the enterprise market, where its productivity software and cloud success give it a springboard for growth. The Brainwave project uses large arrays of Intel FPGAs to accelerate deep neural network (DNN) inference processing for search, ad targeting, facial recognition, and more.