Microsoft has released two infrastructure chips designed for its data centers: Azure Boost DPU and Azure Integrated HSM.
These two chips are installed deep in Microsoft's data center infrastructure, one to improve security and the other for data processing.
Microsoft engineers said that designing chips customized to their needs will have better performance and lower cost, and can reduce dependence on processors manufactured by Nvidia.
According to reports, Microsoft's first DPU is called Azure Boost DPU, which is specially built for Azure infrastructure. It is a kind of hardware and software collaborative design that can run a customized lightweight data processing system.
Azure Boost DPU integrates multiple components of a traditional server into a single silicon wafer.Integrate high-speed ethernet and PCIe interfaces, as well as network and storage engines, data accelerators, and security functions into a fully programmable system-on-chip.
Compared with the existing DPU, Microsoft expects that the power consumption of the DPU cloud running storage workload will be reduced by 3 times and the performance will be increased by 4 times.In addition, a custom application layer has been added to the DPU-based system.This layer leverages DPU's tightly integrated data compression, data protection, and encryption engines to take security and reliability to the next level.
As Microsoft's competitors AWS and Google Cloud have built their own internal security chips, Microsoft's new Azure Integrated HSM has also been unveiled.
Microsoft introduced that this is a brand new internal cloud security chip that allows the signature key (basically a digital + encrypted signature) and the encryption key (a bit string used to encrypt data) to be included in the security module without affecting performance or increasing latency.
Microsoft said: "Starting next year, Azure Integrated HSM will be installed on every new server in the Microsoft data center to enhance the protection of confidential and general-purpose workload by Azure hardware clusters.”
Microsoft has invested a lot of resources to develop chips for general-purpose applications and artificial intelligence.In addition to self-research and custom chips, it also invests in chip companies to expand its chip layout.
For example, D-Marix, a chip startup that invested in Nvidia this year, is shipping its first AI chip, which aims to provide services such as chatbots and video generators.
So far, D-Marix has raised more than 160 million US dollars (about 1.136 billion yuan) in funds. Early customers are testing sample chips and are expected to ship in full next year.