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In Multibillion-Dollar Deal, AWS Taps Intel To Build AI Chips
Expanding on its 18-year relationship with Intel, Amazon Web Services (AWS) this week commissioned the chip giant to help it design and build AI processors.
“Intel will produce an Al fabric chip for AWS on Intel 18A, the company’s most advanced process node,” Intel said in a press release announcing the deal, which it described as a multibillion-dollar partnership spanning several years. “Intel will also produce a custom Xeon 6 chip on Intel 3, building on the existing partnership under which Intel produces Xeon Scalable processors for AWS.”
In addition, the two companies will collaborate on “further designs to be produced by Intel based on Intel 18A and future process nodes including Intel 18AP and Intel 14A.”
Intel inked a similar partnership with Microsoft earlier this year.
The collaboration could significantly boost the AI fortunes of AWS and Intel. Both are giants in their core markets, but when it comes to AI, they have been slower to gain traction compared to rivals Microsoft and Nvidia, respectively.
For AWS, access to Intel’s AI-optimized chips could complement its in-house processors, Trainium and Graviton, and reduce its reliance on Nvidia. For Intel, the AWS deal is a major customer win in a year when it is sorely needed.
Last month, Intel’s foundry business, now in its third year, posted a loss of $2.8 billion for the quarter. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger later announced that the foundry business will be spun off into an independent subsidiary within Intel.
AWS and Intel also framed their new partnership as a boon for the U.S. chip manufacturing industry. Production on the AWS chips will rely heavily on Intel’s chip factories in Ohio, which it is constructing for $28 billion. AWS is committing $7.8 billion of its own to expand its datacenter footprint in the state.
“Intel’s chip design and manufacturing capabilities, combined with the comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud, Al and machine learning services of AWS, will unleash innovation across our shared ecosystem and support the growth of both businesses,” Gelsinger said in a prepared statement, “as well as a sustainable domestic Al supply chain.”
