Microsoft Previews Project Brainwave Hardware for 'Real-Time' AI -- Redmondmag.com

Microsoft Previews Project Brainwave Hardware for 'Real-Time' AI

By Becky Nagel
05/14/2018

Last week Microsoft announced the preview of Project Brainwave, "programmable hardware" that sits on Intel's field programmable gate array (FPGA) chips and is designed to help "greatly speed up" artificial intelligence (AI) calculations.

Project Brainwave helps with AI calculation speed by letting companies do their AI calculations in real time instead of splitting them into smaller batches and reducing latency reduction, the company said.

According to Microsoft, when combined with its Azure Machine Learning offering, it will offer enterprises "real-time AI calculations at competitive cost and with the industry's lowest latency, or lag time."

"I think this is a first step in making the FPGAs more of a general-purpose platform for customers," Mark Russinovich, chief technical officer for Microsoft's Azure cloud computing platform, said of the Project Brainwave preview at Build 2018.

Currently, the Project Brainwave preview supports TensorFlow, and the company is working on having it support the Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit.

More information on Project Brainwave can be found here.

About the Author

Becky Nagel is the former editorial director and director of Web for 1105 Media's Converge 360 group, and she now serves as vice president of AI for company, specializing in developing media, events and training for companies around AI and generative AI technology. She's the author of "ChatGPT Prompt 101 Guide for Business Users" and other popular AI resources with a real-world business perspective. She regularly speaks, writes and develops content around AI, generative AI and other business tech. Find her on X/Twitter @beckynagel.

Featured

Multi-Tenant Organization Hooks Released for Microsoft 365

Microsoft Entra ID's new multi-tenant organization capabilities have reached general availability (GA).
Real-World Ransomware Recovery

Here's how I was (mostly) successful in recovering a family PC infected with malware.
Microsoft Launches Small AI Models Family Phi-3

Recognizing that bigger isn't always better, Microsoft has released its smallest open AI models to date, Phi-3.
Microsoft and OpenAI Continue Global AI Expansions

Microsoft and OpenAI each continued their global expansion this month, with the announcements of new infrastructure investments and service rollouts in new regions, like Asia and the Middle East.
Cisco Warns of Brute Force Attacks Targeting VPNs and Firewalls

Cisco has revealed that a global increase in brute force attacks targeting Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) and other devices is currently taking place.