This week from Microsoft just announce, like other large multinationals, the company is also running a project which seeks to literally create custom servers that gain in efficiency and above all power. This is more or less what promise in Project Catapult although with a difference more than interesting because, while companies of popularity that already have travel this road as can be Google, Facebook or even Amazon bet by chips conventional, in Microsoft will provide to its servers of chips FPGA programmable.
Basically what you are trying to Microsoft is to create their own servers providing them with programmable FPGA chip which gives them ownership to be able to adapt much better and in a much more powerful way to different environments and scenarios. Thanks to Microsoft, this technology has found the necessary support to continue to develop, not in vain it seems ideal for a company which has practically based around your business in the cloud services and to provide this service, as they indicated, the best is own servers that are especially versatile, powerful and above all efficient.
Microsoft ACE could be on your servers FPGA chips.
According to the statements of those responsible for this project, apparently the FPGA chips did not seem at first to be a valid alternative although, after working with them, the team could demonstrate that this technology was much more promising than it might seem at first, especially since these specialized chips may be reset at any time thus adapting to new burdens of work and new needs.
A example very clear of what can offer this class of servers it have in that are the responsible of that a search in Bing is so fast. During the first tests of this technology, the algorithms of learning automatic managed that Bing was 100 times more fast that using servers with chips generic.
Such is the projection of this technology that, according to those responsible of this project, each new server of Microsoft will include a FPGA, even today day are working in the integration of these servers dedicated to their developments in intelligence artificial. As a final detail, let know you that these chips come from Altera and, precisely, the decision taken by Intel buy alters in 2015 was promoted mainly to meet the needs of Microsoft.
