A noteworthy development in the artificial intelligence (AI) chip market has just appeared when Meta signed an agreement to use millions of AWS Graviton chips developed by Amazon. This is considered a strategic step to meet Meta's rapidly increasing AI computing needs.
According to an announcement from Amazon, the chips chosen by Meta are AWS Graviton, an ARM-based CPU line. Unlike GPUs that specialize in graphics processing and large model training, CPUs take on general computing tasks, especially suitable for the inference stage after the model has been trained.
This shift reflects changes in the operation of modern AI. When the models are completed, AI agents are deployed to perform a series of tasks such as writing code, searching for information, processing real-time requests or coordinating multiple complex processing steps.
These tasks require flexible computing capabilities and cost efficiency, which is what CPUs like Graviton are aiming for.
Notably, AWS said that the latest Graviton versions have been optimized specifically for the workload related to AI. This helps Amazon create a competitive advantage over other cloud platforms such as Google Cloud or Microsoft Azure.
The agreement with Meta also takes place in the context of fierce competition between technology giants. Previously, Meta signed a contract worth 10 billion USD lasting 6 years with Google Cloud, showing a strategy of infrastructure diversification.
However, the continued deep cooperation with AWS shows that Amazon still plays an important role in Meta's AI ecosystem.
Not only stopping at CPUs, Amazon also developed its own AI chip line called Trainium, serving both training and reasoning.
However, most of the capacity of this chip line has been reserved by Anthropic, which is committed to spending up to 100 billion USD in 10 years to operate the system on AWS. In return, Amazon increased its total investment in Anthropic to 13 billion USD.
From a competitive perspective, Amazon's move is also directly aimed at Nvidia and Intel. In a recent letter to shareholders, Amazon CEO - Mr. Andy Jassy emphasized that businesses are looking for a better price/performance ratio for AI, a factor that Amazon believes they can meet.
Meta becoming a major customer of AWS Graviton not only brings significant revenue to Amazon but also acts as living proof of the company's self-developed chip capabilities.
