Quest for AI Leadership Pushes Microsoft Further Into Chip Development

Microsoft Corp. says it has the answer with a chip design for its HoloLens goggles--an extra AI processor that analyzes what the user sees and hears right there on the device rather than wasting precious microseconds sending the data back to the cloud. "For an autonomous car, you can't afford the time to send it back to the cloud to make the decisions to avoid the crash, to avoid hitting a person. But the rapid development of artificial intelligence has left some traditional chip makers facing real competition for the first time in over a decade. More recently, in an effort to take on Google and Amazon.com Inc. in cloud services, the company used customizable chips known as field programmable gate arrays to unleash its AI prowess on real-world challenges.