Microsoft Strung Together Tens of Thousands of Chips in a Pricey Supercomputer for OpenAI
When Microsoft Corp. invested $1 billion in OpenAI in 2019, it agreed to build a massive, cutting-edge supercomputer for the artificial intelligence research startup. The only problem: Microsoft didn't have anything like what OpenAI needed and wasn't totally sure it could build something that big in its Azure cloud service without it breaking.
OpenAI was trying to train an increasingly large set of artificial intelligence programs called models, which were ingesting greater volumes of data and learning more and more parameters, the variables the AI system has sussed out through training and retraining. That meant OpenAI needed access to powerful cloud computing services for long periods of time.
To meet that challenge, Microsoft had to find ways to string together tens of thousands of Nvidia Corp.'s A100 graphics chips — the workhorse for training AI models — and change how it positions servers on racks to prevent power outages. Scott Guthrie, the Microsoft executive vice president who oversees cloud and AI, wouldn't give a specific cost for the project, but said “it's probably larger” than several hundred million dollars.
“We built a system architecture that could operate and be reliable at a very large scale. That's what resulted in ChatGPT being possible,” said Nidhi Chappell, Microsoft general manager of Azure AI infrastructure. “That's one model that came out of of it. There's going to be many, many others.”
The technology allowed OpenAI to release ChatGPT, the viral chatbot that attracted more than 1 million users within days of going public in November and is now getting pulled into other companies' business models, from those run by billionaire hedge fund founder Ken Griffin to food-delivery service Instacart Inc. As
Read more on tech.hindustantimes.com
