Apple is shifting towards Amazon Web Services (AWS) custom artificial intelligence (AI) chips for services like search, with a focus on pretraining models like Apple Intelligence. This partnership marks a significant endorsement of AWS as a major player in the cloud AI market.
At the annual AWS Reinvent conference, Apple’s senior director of machine learning and AI, Benoit Dupin, revealed that the company uses AWS proprietary chips for Siri, Apple Maps, and Apple Music services. This has led to a 40% efficiency gain in search services.
Dupin also hinted at using Amazon’s Trainium2 chip for pretraining models, with expected early numbers showing up to 50% improvement in efficiency. This demonstrates that Amazon’s custom chips can be used not only for inference but also for developing new AI capabilities.
The partnership is seen as a strong endorsement of AWS as Apple competes with Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud in the AI market. Apple has been using cloud services, including Google Cloud’s TPU chips for training its iPhone AI service, which it calls Apple Intelligence.
The move highlights the growing competition among cloud providers to develop more efficient AI processing methods, potentially changing the way companies approach AI training. With AWS expected to announce new details on offering Nvidia-based AI servers for rent, this partnership could signal a shift towards alternative non-Nvidia approaches in the industry.
Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/12/03/apple-says-it-uses-amazons-custom-ai-chips-.html