Array
(
    [content] => 
    [params] => Array
        (
            [0] => /forum/index.php?threads/apple-working-on-ai-chips-for-data-centers-wsj-reports.20162/
        )

    [addOns] => Array
        (
            [DL6/MLTP] => 13
            [Hampel/TimeZoneDebug] => 1000070
            [SV/ChangePostDate] => 2010200
            [SemiWiki/Newsletter] => 1000010
            [SemiWiki/WPMenu] => 1000010
            [SemiWiki/XPressExtend] => 1000010
            [ThemeHouse/XLink] => 1000970
            [ThemeHouse/XPress] => 1010570
            [XF] => 2021370
            [XFI] => 1050270
        )

    [wordpress] => /var/www/html
)

Apple working on AI chips for data centers, WSJ reports

Daniel Nenni

Admin
Staff member
(Reuters) - Apple is developing its own chip to run artificial intelligence software in data centers, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The project, internally codenamed as Project ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center), aims to leverage Apple's chip design expertise for its server infrastructure, the report said.

Apple, whose shares were 1% higher before the bell on Tuesday, did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.

The company has emerged as a major chip designer in recent years, thanks to the success of its semiconductors that are used in the iPhone, iPads and Mac laptops.

Apple's server chip will likely be focused on running AI models, also known as inference, rather than in training AI models, where Nvidia is dominant, the WSJ report said.

Amid growing pressure due to a slow roll out of AI services, CEO Tim Cook had last week signaled that Apple plans to unveil a raft of features powered by the technology in the coming months.

"We continue to feel very bullish about our opportunity in generative AI and we're making significant investments," Cook told Reuters last week.

The company plans to hold a virtual event on Tuesday where it is expected to showcase new iPad models, some of which could come with a new chip aimed at speeding up AI tasks carried out on the devices.

Project ACDC has been in the works for several years and it is uncertain when the new chip will be unveiled, if ever, the WSJ report said.

Apple has been closely working with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co to design and initiate production of such chips and that it remains uncertain whether both companies have yielded a definitive result, the report said.

 
Apple has not had much success on the server market. Few customers like being locked into a single vendor solution.

Apple could have more success with making these chips for their own internal servers. They certainly have enough of a consumer base to justify building their own AI datacenters.

But if Apple wants to play to its advantages they would be better off trying to push as much inference computation to the edge nodes i.e. smartphones as possible. They typically have access to TSMC's leading edge node and others do not.
 
Apple has not had much success on the server market. Few customers like being locked into a single vendor solution. Apple could have success with making these chips for their own internal servers however. They certainly have enough of a consumer base to justify building their own AI datacenters.

It is for internal use. Apple is a very large cloud company. It is also an ego thing amongst the cloud companies. Amazon has been at a lot of conferences lately bragging. Seriously, I have seen several keynotes from them this year and more to come. It's the Annapurna Labs people they bought in 2015 for $350M, which was a huge amount back then.

Could you imagine Apple selling server chips? :ROFLMAO:
 
It is for internal use. Apple is a very large cloud company. It is also an ego thing amongst the cloud companies. Amazon has been at a lot of conferences lately bragging. Seriously, I have seen several keynotes from them this year and more to come. It's the Annapurna Labs people they bought in 2015 for $350M, which was a huge amount back then.

Could you imagine Apple selling server chips? :ROFLMAO:

Apple did try to sell MacOS server.
 
It is for internal use. Apple is a very large cloud company. It is also an ego thing amongst the cloud companies. Amazon has been at a lot of conferences lately bragging. Seriously, I have seen several keynotes from them this year and more to come. It's the Annapurna Labs people they bought in 2015 for $350M, which was a huge amount back then.

Could you imagine Apple selling server chips? :ROFLMAO:
It's not clear if Apple own needs are going to provide sufficient ROI. Amazon, Google and Microsoft are hyperscalers (i.e. their clouds serve tons of business customers). Apple's own cloud does not have business customers. Moreover, they actually use hyperscalers' resources at least for some (if not most) of their own cloud services. I suspect Apple wants to have servers with their own chips to be able to offer cloud services to software developers who develop stuff for Apple devices. This might be critical even if the ROI is not there.
 
Back
Top