ChatGPT rose to viral fame over the previous six months, however it didn’t come out of nowhere. Based on a weblog publish revealed by Microsoft on Monday, OpenAI, the corporate behind ChatGPT, reached out to Microsoft to construct AI infrastructure on hundreds of Nvidia GPUs greater than 5 years in the past.
OpenAI and Microsoft’s partnership has caught numerous limelight not too long ago, particularly after Microsoft made a $10 billion funding within the analysis group that’s behind instruments like ChatGPT and DALL-E 2. Nevertheless, the partnership began way back, in keeping with Microsoft. Since then, Bloomberg reviews that Microsoft has spent “a number of hundred million {dollars}” in growing the infrastructure to assist ChatGPT and initiatives like Bing Chat.

A lot of that cash went to Nvidia, which is now within the forefront of computing {hardware} required to coach AI fashions. As a substitute of gaming GPUs such as you’d discover on an inventory of the perfect graphics playing cards, Microsoft went after Nvidia’s enterprise-grade GPUs just like the A100 and H100.
It’s not simply so simple as getting graphics playing cards collectively and coaching a language mannequin, although. As Nidhi Chappell, Microsoft head of product for Azure, explains: “This isn’t one thing that you just simply purchase an entire bunch of GPUs, hook them collectively, they usually’ll begin working collectively. There may be numerous system-level optimization to get the perfect efficiency, and that comes with numerous expertise over many generations.”
With the infrastructure in place, Microsoft is now opening up its {hardware} to others. The corporate introduced on Monday in a separate weblog publish that it will provide Nvidia H100 programs “on-demand in sizes starting from eight to hundreds of Nvidia H100 GPUs,” delivered by Microsoft’s Azure community.
The recognition of ChatGPT has skyrocketed Nvidia, which has invested in AI by {hardware} and software program for a number of years. AMD, Nvidia’s major competitor in gaming graphics playing cards, has been making an attempt to make headway into the area with accelerators just like the Intuition MI300.
Based on Greg Brockman, president and co-founder of OpenAI, coaching ChatGPT wouldn’t have been potential with out the horsepower supplied by Microsoft: “Co-designing supercomputers with Azure has been essential for scaling our demanding AI coaching wants, making our analysis and alignment work on programs like ChatGPT potential.”
Nvidia is anticipated to disclose extra about future AI merchandise in the course of the GPU Know-how Convention (GTC). with the keynote presentation kicks issues off on March 21. Microsoft is increasing its AI highway map later this week, with a presentation targeted round the way forward for AI within the office scheduled for March 16.
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