Google and Intel announced an expanded multi-year partnership Thursday for Google Cloud to continue using Intel AI infrastructure and develop processors.
Google Cloud AI will use Intel’s Xeon processors, including Intel’s latest Xeon 6 chips, for cloud and inference tasks. The company has been using various Xeon processors from Intel for decades.
The companies will also expand co-development of custom Infrastructure Processing Units (IPUs), which help accelerate and manage data center tasks by offloading them from CPUs.
This chip development partnership, which begins in 2021, will focus on custom ASIC-based IPUs.
Intel declined to share any information regarding pricing of the deal.
This expansion comes as the industry is hungry for CPUs. While GPUs are used for developing and training AI models, CPUs are important for running AI models and within the general AI infrastructure.
“AI is reshaping the way we build and scale infrastructure,” Intel Chief Executive Lip-Bu Tan said in a statement. Company Press Release. “Scaling AI requires more than accelerators – it requires balanced systems. CPUs and IPUs are central to delivering the performance, efficiency, and resiliency demanded by modern AI workloads.”
In recent months more companies have been focusing their attention on CPUs as the shortage of chips is increasing.
owned by softbank Arm Holdings recently announced Arm AGI CPUsAmidst the worldwide CPU shortage, the semiconductor giant has manufactured its first chip itself.
