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Amazon's AI chip executive tells BI why Nvidia is not a competitor, how Anthropic helps, and what AMD needs
- Amazon Web Services has launched an upgraded line of AI chips, called Trainium 2, designed for lower cost and not to compete with their Nvidia counterparts, according to Gadi Hutt senior director of customer and product engineering at the company's chip designing subsidiary, Annapurna Labs. The AI chips are meant to provide more customer choice, said Hutt. Meanwhile, AWS has partnered with Anthropic and Intel, and also considered selling AMD's new AI chips, but those chips are still unavailable on AWS as there has not been strong customer demand yet.
- Earlier versions of AWS's AI chips saw mixed results, however, the new chips come with Project Rainier, a new supercomputer cluster, designed to accommodate the new chips. The goal is to give customers a lower-cost option because the market is big enough for multiple vendors, said Hutt.
- The customer profiles and AI workloads they target are also different, making it a joint effort to grow the overall size of the market. In the interview, Hutt discussed several topics, including AWS's partnership with Anthropic, which will be Project Rainer's first customer. The two companies have worked closely over the past year. AWS will continue to work with Intel, whose CEO Pat Gelsinger just retired, because customer demand for Intel's server chips remains high.
- Hutt insists this is not a competition, but a joint effort to grow the overall size of the market and that Nvidia's GPUs will remain dominant in the foreseeable future. But if customers believe that's the way they need to go, then they will do it. Number two is a very good position to be in, Hutt added.
- Graviton is not replacing x86. However, following customer demand, more than 50% of our recent landings on CPUs were Graviton, said Hutt. They also still sell a lot of x86 cores too for their customers and believe they're the best place to do that. They are treating other chip companies as good suppliers and have a lot of business to do together.
- Amazon Web Services is always looking for customer demand and customer feedback, and if customers strongly indicate that they need AMD's AI chips, then there's no reason not to deploy it, said Hutt. As of now, there hasn't been a strong customer demand yet.
- Amazon's AI chip business is supported by Amazon CEO Andy Jassy and AWS's CEO Matt Garman, and there is also a lot of collaboration within the company with science and service teams that build solutions on those chips.
- However, customers still love Nvidia and there is no intention to stop selling them. The market is still big, so there's room for multiple vendors here.
- In summary, AWS's new AI chips are designed to provide more customer choice and not to compete with Nvidia's GPUs, as there is enough customers in the market for multiple vendors. They have also partnered with Anthropic and Intel and already considering AMD's AI chips. However, no strong customer demand yet for it.
- Hutt insists this is not a competition and they aim to grow the market. He also mentioned that Nvidia's GPU will continue to dominate in the foreseeable future and noted that number two is still a good position to be in.
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