Microsoft denies working with AMD on its own ‘Athena’ processor

Microsoft is working with AMD on an artificial intelligence processor, a person familiar with the matter has revealed.

The two companies are reportedly working together to create an alternative to NVIDIA's GPU chips, with the source saying that Microsoft is providing AMD with engineering resources and other support to develop a Microsoft processor codenamed "Athena" in collaboration with AMD.

However, Microsoft spokesman Frank Shaw denied AMD's involvement in the Athena development programme, saying "AMD is a good partner, but they are not involved in the programme".

Microsoft is now developing Athena, an artificial intelligence chip designed to run large language models. Microsoft has already invested around $2 billion in Athena, involving hundreds of employees, and the chip is now being tested internally and could be in widespread use as early as next year.

The chip has already been made available to a small number of Microsoft employees, as well as ChatGPT developer OpenAI, to train large language models and support inference, a key technology behind Artificial Intelligence Generative (AIGC).