Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

ChatGPT developer OpenAI, a leader in the field of generative AI, is exploring the possibility of AI chips and has evaluated potential acquisition targets to accelerate the research and development of self-developed chips.

Compile: Poetry |

Microsoft and OpenAI, a pair of partners, will become competitors in the artificial intelligence chip race.

OpenAI is considering building its own artificial intelligence chip to support ChatGPT and has begun evaluating a potential acquisition target, Reuters reported.

Meanwhile, there are reports that Microsoft will unveil its first chip designed for artificial intelligence at next month's annual developer conference.

According to internal discussions recently revealed to Reuters, the company has not yet decided to take further action. However, the company has been discussing options to address the shortage of expensive AI chips on which OpenAI depends, at least since last year, according to people familiar with the matter.

These include making its own AI chips, working more closely with other chipmakers, including Nvidia, and diversifying suppliers (not limited to Nvidia).

CEO Sam Altman had previously made buying more AI chips a top priority for the company.

01. Ku Yingwei for a long time as ChatGPT and other large language models (LLM) set off a new round of AI reform, the shortage of AI chips is becoming more and more serious. OpenAI has discussed options to address the shortage of AI chips it relies on since at least last year, and has assessed potential acquisition targets, with the acquired chipmaker planning to complete the development task, according to people familiar with the matter.

However, Reuters reported that OpenAI has not yet decided to press ahead with the AI chip development plan.

After all, developing AI chips is an expensive and time-consuming process. OpenAI spent more than five years developing hardware such as GPT-4,AI chips, and the development time will not be short.

Currently, AI chips such as Nvidia's H100 are one of the most valuable resources in the field of technology, because they are essential for training large language models such as ChatGPT. This also makes the technology giants buy a large number of AI chips, which makes the chip shortage more serious and indirectly increases the operating cost of the large model.

The former director of Tesla AI, AI Daniel Andrej Karpathy, who returned to OpenAI, had predicted that GPT-5 might need 30000 to 50000 H100s. Obviously, the shortage of chips limits the development of OpenAI. Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, has publicly complained that the GPU market is dominated by Nvidia.

The Nvidia H100 schematic earlier this year, some analysts estimated that the ChatGPT would cost as much as $700000 a day to run. If OpenAI succeeds in developing its own AI chip, the operating cost of the company's large model is expected to be reduced.

A handful of big technology companies, such as Amazon and Alphabet's Google, are trying to take control of the job-designing chips that are critical to their business, and striving to develop their own AI chips will make OpenAI one of them.

It is unclear whether OpenAI will press ahead with plans to develop a custom chip.

According to industry veterans, this would be a major strategic move and a huge investment that could cost billions of dollars a year. But even if OpenAI devotes a lot of resources to this task, there is no guarantee of success.

Buying a chip company could speed up OpenAI's process of developing its own chips, just as Amazon bought Israeli chip start-up Annapurna Labs in 2015.

OpenAI considered this path and even conducted due diligence on a potential acquisition target, according to a person familiar with OpenAI's plans. The identity of the company that OpenAI is considering buying is unknown.

Even if OpenAI continues with its plans for custom chips, including acquisitions, it could take several years, during which time the company continues to rely on commercial suppliers such as Nvidia and AMD.

In 2020, Microsoft built a huge supercomputer for OpenAI, using 10000 advanced Nvidia GPU. At the beginning of 2023, Microsoft invested another $10 billion in OpenAI. Microsoft provides OpenAI with the huge computing power it needs to train its AI model. In return, Microsoft was able to integrate OpenAI models into its own products, such as New Bing.

This series of cooperation gives Microsoft the ability to compete with Google in the search engine field, but OpenAI and Microsoft actually have a competitive relationship.

As early as April this year, it was reported that Microsoft was working on an AI server chip, codenamed "Athena", and that the chip had been under development since around 2019. While developing Athena, Microsoft ordered at least hundreds of thousands of GPU from Nvidia to support OpenAI's computing requirements, according to the information. Microsoft wants Athena to compete with Nvidia's H100.

Interestingly, Athena was tested jointly by teams from Microsoft and OpenAI.

It was also reported in September that Microsoft was trying to reduce its dependence on OpenAI by developing its own large language model, and in view of rising operating costs, Microsoft asked researchers to build smaller and cheaper alternatives to the OpenAI GPT model.

Now, Microsoft's Athena is likely to come to the fore at next month's annual developer conference, while it is unclear how OpenAI's chip development plans will move forward.

Reference link:

Https://www.reuters.com/technology/chatgpt-owner-openai-is-exploring-making-its-own-ai-chips-sources-2023-10-06/

Https://www.businessinsider.com/openai-is-considering-making-its-own-ai-chips-chatgpt-2023-10

Https://www.theinformation.com/articles/microsoft-to-debut-ai-chip-next-month-that-could-cut-nvidia-gpu-costs?rc=bw8enl

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: new Research (ID:chuxinyanjiu), author: Poetry

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