Apple working with Broadcom to develop in-house AI server chips: report
Dec. 11, 2024 9:43 AM ET
By: Chris Ciaccia, SA News Edito
 Dronandy
Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) is working with Broadcom (NASDAQ: AVGO) to develop the company's first in-house server chip exclusively designed for artificial intelligence, The Information reported.
The chip, known internally as Baltra, could be ready for mass production by 2026, the news outlet reported, citing people with direct knowledge of the matter. The new AI chip could be used for inferencing, which has the chip capable of processing new data and then hands them off to the large language models to produce an output, a task different than training models, the news outlet added.
The chip will be produced by Taiwan Semiconductor ( TSM) and likely use its 3 nanometer process, The Information added, citing sources.
Broadcom shares rose 3.8% in early trading, while Apple shares rose 0.5%. Nvidia ( NVDA), which dominates the AI accelerator market, rose 0.5%.
The plan to bring its own chips to its own servers was born three years ago, but the plan was accelerated after OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot took the world by storm in December 2022, according to previous reports.
Chief Executive Tim Cook has said previously Apple has some advantages that its competitors in the AI space do not. "We believe in the transformative power and promise of AI, and we believe we have advantages that will differentiate us in this new era, including Apple's unique combination of seamless hardware, software and services integration, groundbreaking Apple's silicon, with our industry-leading neural engines and our unwavering focus on privacy, which underpins everything we create," Cook said on the company's earnings call in May.
Last week, Apple executive Benoit Dupin gave a rare endorsement of Amazon's ( AMZN) custom artificial intelligence chips and said the iPhone maker is evaluating Amazon's latest AI chip for pre-training models.
Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple has also used some of Google's ( GOOG) ( GOOGL) chips to train AI models for Apple Intelligence.
The news comes as Apple continued to roll out its Apple Intelligence features on Wednesday. The tech giant released the latest versions of iOS, macOS and iPadOS, all of which include several AI-related features, including the integration of ChatGPT into Siri.
Apple and Broadcom did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Seeking Alpha. |
