Microsoft demonstrates the world's 'first AI supercomputer,' using programmable hardware in the cloud

Microsoft has quietly installed an esoteric, powerful piece of silicon across its cloud-oriented data centers, and it's saying the new chips will give its Azure cloud computing platform a strong competitive advantage in the burgeoning field of artificial intelligence. Using the technology, the company demonstrated what it called "the first AI supercomputer" during Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella's closing keynote address on the first day of the company's Ignite technology conference in Atlanta. It's part of Microsoft's vision to "democratize" artificial intelligence, Nadella said. He pointed to four pillars: agents, applications, services, and infrastructure, with the new chips being an example of the latter. Field programmable gate arrays, or FPGAs, have been quietly installed in Microsoft servers in 15 countries on five continents over the past two years, said Doug Burger, Microsoft Research's principal hardware-development engineer on what's known as "Project Catapult."