Microsoft's BrainWave is going to supercharge AI - and it's coming to the cloud

Microsoft is using custom hardware to realize a 50-100x speed up in how quickly it can run AI algorithms that power its Bing search engine -- and will make the tech available to all from next year. The acceleration is being powered by the BrainWave platform, a network of customizable chips known as Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), tailored to efficiently handle deep neural networks. "The power of the BrainWave platform are FPGAs, field-programmable gate arrays, which are really executing these AI algorithms in hardware," said Joseph Sirosh, corporate VP for artificial intelligence & research at Microsoft. "What this means is approximately 50-100x the speed up. Also, there's significant cost savings, because you are executing these neural networks in the most efficient way possible in hardware."