Microsoft Developing Custom Networking Card to Boost AI Capabilities on Azure
• Microsoft is developing its own networking card for AI datacenters to decrease reliance on Nvidia's hardware and optimize Azure infrastructure
• Effort headed by Pradeep Sindhu, Juniper Networks co-founder, who was appointed by Satya Nadella
• Card aims to improve performance and efficiency of Azure servers running Intel CPUs and Nvidia GPUs
• Could accelerate development of AI models, making process faster and more cost-effective
• Likely years away, but custom networking silicon key to cloud providers like AWS and Google