Bloomberg said Microsoft has begun designing its own processors for use in Surface cloud systems and computers, reducing reliance on Intel.
Sources told Bloomberg that the software and cloud giant Microsoft has begun working on their in-house chip designs using ARM architects. The main line of business is a target for supporting the data sources that power Microsoft’s cloud computing systems, which include Azure for business and OneDrive for consumers.
Currently most datacentres are powered by Intel Xeon series chips built on x86 architecture. As long as they are powerful, they are expensive. This is partly due to Intel’s strong position in this market, and partly due to the higher investment required for marginal gains in computing power. There is widespread recognition in academia and industry that Moore ‘s Law is slowing down, although some even say that its end is already in sight. Keeping computer advances going is more expensive and longer lasting. At the same time, a new specialized computing application, for example coming out of greater use of AI, would be best served by chips designed to optimize the specific use cases rather than common solutions.
Another major motivator data operator that sees in ARM architecture is its power consumption gain. With thousands of servers hosted in a single datacentre and dozens of data distributed worldwide, hyperscalers like Microsoft need to consider the total cost of finding chips, including computing power, size, power consumption, as well as cooling costs. A small saving at unit level could translate into large savings overall.
Microsoft has not officially confirmed (or denied) the report, but if it is confirmed to be true, Microsoft would be the latest among cloud computing depression to design their own chips. Google started working on its own chipsets already in 2017, initially for its Pixel phones but later expanded to its cloud infrastructure, with the OpenTitan open source chip design announced a year ago. Amazon has delivered two generations of its own data center slots, called Graviton and Graviton2, with the first release in late 2018 and the second year thereafter. Alibaba’s Hanguang 800, the best near-data processor for AI, was announced in September 2019.
Bloomberg was also told that another campaign has started in Microsoft to design their own PC chips using ARM architecture. Microsoft is not the first computer company to do so. Apple has already installed its own custom chipset, called “M1”, in commercial products with the latest line of Mac computers announced in November. This wasn’t even Microsoft’s own first attempt to move away from over-reliance on the x86 architecture. It has already launched Surface PCs using Qualcomm Snapdragon chipsets. The latest report, again if true, would highlight a deeper integration that Microsoft is undertaking.