Microsoft’s technical director Kevin Scott said that it is now easier to get Nvidia GPU chips for artificial intelligence training , which has improved compared to a few months ago. .
Scott said at the CodeConference conference in Dana Point, California, on Wednesday that Nvidia’s GPU chip supply is gradually opening up. Since Microsoft-backed OpenAI launched the ChatGPT chatbot late last year, the market has been in high demand for GPU chips.
“Demand far exceeds the GPU computing power that the entire ecosystem can provide,” Scott said. ” That problem is being addressed. The gap is still wide, but it’s getting better every week, and the good things we’re receiving are There’s more news than bad news, which is a good sign .”
Microsoft, Google and other tech companies have been rapidly incorporating generative AI technology into their products and selling the capabilities to customers. Training and deploying underlying artificial intelligence models mainly rely on Nvidia’s GPU chips, which has led to chip supply shortages.
Nvidia said last month it expected revenue to grow 170% year over year this quarter . The company’s control of the artificial intelligence chip market has allowed gross profit margins to surge to 70% from 44% a year ago. Nvidia’s stock price has risen 190% this year, far outpacing other companies in the S&P 500 Index.
Previously, in an interview, Scott said that one of his responsibilities is to control Microsoft’s GPU budget. He called it a “terrible job” and “had been miserable for five years . ”
“The situation is much better now than it was when we last spoke,” Scott said Wednesday, when generative AI technology was still new and attracting widespread public attention, he said.
The increased supply of chips “makes it less scary for me to decide between so many conflicting jobs,” he said.
Nvidia Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress told analysts on an earnings call last month that Nvidia expects supply to increase every quarter next year .
Microsoft provides Azure cloud computing services for OpenAI’s artificial intelligence. Website analytics platform Similarweb said in a blog post that ChatGPT’s traffic has been declining month-on-month for three consecutive months. At the same time, Microsoft plans to start selling the right to use its office suite Microsoft365 Copilot to large organizations that subscribe to its productivity software starting in November this year.
Scott declined to answer questions about Microsoft’s development of custom AI chips, but he highlighted the company’s internal chip work. Microsoft has previously cooperated with Qualcomm to develop Surface PC chips based on ARM architecture.
“I can’t confirm anything, but I will say that we’re investing quite heavily in chips and that’s what we’ve been doing for many years,” Scott said. “What we’re going to do is, we’re going to make sure Play the cards you’re dealt and make the best choice on how to build these systems. And over the past few years, the best choice has been Nvidia.”