On Tuesday Amazon.com introduced two new custom computing chips that it hopes to help customers beat the cost of chips from Intel Corp and Nvidia Corp.
Amazon Web Services AWS, with US $45.37 billion in sales in 2020, is the world's biggest cloud computing provider and one of the biggest buyers of data center chips whose computing power AWS rents out to its customers. AWS has been working on developing custom chips since buying a startup called Annapurna Labs in 2015.
The third generation of its Graviton chip is designed to compete with the central processor from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices. AWS also said that a new class of chip called Trainium, designed to train machine learning computer models and will compete with chips from Nvidia, will soon be available to customers. AWS expects to train machine learning models for 40 per cent less cost than Nvidia's flagship chip.
AWS still works closely with Intel, AMD and Nvidia - for example, it is working with Nvidia to pair its Graviton processors to provide a way for Android game developer to stream their titles to devices. Brown said that AWS wants to keep the computing market competitive by offering an additional chip choice.
We have thrown down the gauntlet on performance. In the years to come, I believe that you'll see better performance from all of them - Intel, AMD -- on price-performance specifically. That's something they have to keep our customers happy on.