At its Build developer conference, Microsoft <\/a> today announced that it has teamed up with OpenAI<\/a>, the startup trying to build a general artificial intelligence, with — among other things — a $1 billion investment from Microsoft, to create one of the world’s fastest supercomputers on top of Azure’s infrastructure. Microsoft says that the 285,000-core machine would have ranked in the top five of the TOP500 supercomputer rankings<\/a>.<\/p>\n Because Microsoft doesn’t actually tell us much more than that, except for a few more specs that say it had 10,000 GPUs and 400 gigabits per second of network connectivity per server, we’ll just have to take Microsoft’s and OpenAI’s <\/a> word for this.<\/p>\n To be in the top five of supercomputers, a machine would currently have to reach more than 23,000 teraflops per second. It’s also worth noting that the No. 1 machine, the IBM <\/a> Power System-based Summit, reaches over 148,000 teraflops, so there is quite a wide margin here. Despite writing a four-page press release about its AI initiatives, Microsoft didn’t share any actual performance numbers.<\/p>\n “The computer is connected to Azure, but is a dedicated resource of OpenAI’s. They paid for the system, paying both Microsoft and other suppliers. The total cost is not being disclosed,” a Microsoft spokesperson told me when I asked for details. We’re also being told that the system is still running today.<\/u><\/p>\n Since Microsoft’s massive investment, OpenAI has made Azure its cloud of choice and this supercomputer was developed “with and exclusively for OpenAI.”<\/p>\n OpenAI has made a name for itself by training very large models. That’s obviously the purpose of a project like this, too.<\/p>\n “As we’ve learned more and more about what we need and the different limits of all the components that make up a supercomputer, we were really able to say, ‘If we could design our dream system, what would it look like?’ ” said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman <\/a>. “And then Microsoft was able to build it.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Tags:<\/b> Frederic Lardinois<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At its Build developer conference, Microsoft today announced that it has teamed up with OpenAI, the startup trying to build a general artificial intelligence, with — among other things — a $1 billion investment from Microsoft, to create one of the world’s fastest supercomputers on top of Azure’s infrastructure. Microsoft says that the 285,000-core machine would have ranked … Continue reading Microsoft teamed up with OpenAI to build a massive AI supercomputer in Azure<\/span><\/a> Continue Reading
Contact Information:<\/b>
Frederic Lardinois<\/p>\n
<\/a>, Wire<\/a>, United States<\/a>, English<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Contact Information:<\/h3>\n
![\"MSFT](\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/MSFT-Nadella-OpenAI-Altman-09-official-joint-pic.jpg?w=730&crop=1\")
<\/p>\n