Microsoft Forays Into AI Processors With Graphcore Chips In Azure Cloud

Microsoft integrated Graphcore's AI-powered chip with its Azure to become the first cloud provider that offers optimizations for AI applications. With this addition, any organisation who leverages the Microsoft Azure cloud platform will be AI-ready. However, Microsoft will initially offer Graphcore's intelligence processing unit (IPU) AI capabilities to organisations who are pushing the boundaries in machine learning. Graphcore and Microsoft were working hand in hand for a little over two years to innovate and develop systems for Azure that could render ML tasks on IPUs. And this week, Microsoft announced the integration of the IPU with Azure to boost processing of artificial intelligence-based applications, thereby, evoking excitement among developers and businesses around the world.