During this week Microsoft has just announced that, like other large multinationals, the company also has a project underway where it literally seeks create custom servers with which to gain efficiency and above all power. This is more or less what they promise in Project Catapult although with a more than interesting difference since, while renowned companies that have already traveled this path such as Google, Facebook or even Amazon bet on conventional chips, in Microsoft they will provide their servers with programmable FPGA chips.
Basically what Microsoft is trying to do is create your own servers by equipping them with programmable FPGA chips which gives them the property of being 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 developing, not in vain does it seem ideal for a company that has practically based its entire business on cloud services and, to provide this service, as indicated, the best thing is have servers that are especially versatile, powerful and above all efficient.
Microsoft's ace could be in the FPGA chips in its servers.
Based on the statements of those responsible for this project, FPGA chips did not seem at first to be a valid alternative, although, after working with them, the team was able to demonstrate that this technology was much more promising than it might seem at first, especially since these specialized chips could be reprogrammed at any time, thus adapting to new workloads and new needs.
We have a very clear example of what this class of servers can offer in that are responsible for making a Bing search so fast. During the first tests of this technology, machine learning algorithms made Bing 100 times faster than using servers with generic chips.
Such is the projection of this technology that, according to those responsible for this project, every new Microsoft server will include an FPGA, even today they are working on the integration of these servers dedicated to their developments in artificial intelligence. As a final detail, tell you that these chips come from Altera And precisely, the decision that Intel made in 2015 to buy Altera was promoted mainly to meet Microsoft's needs.