Amazon dives into the chips for switches

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According to The Information, Amazon is working on custom chips for its hardware network switches. These chips, which could help the company improve its internal infrastructure as well as its AWS cloud services, are reportedly the result of the 2015 acquisition of Annapurna Labs, an Israeli company, for US$ 350 million. Amazon already builds its own switches, but until now relied on Broadcom for its chips. These custom chips could also incorporate new machine learning functions. This isn’t the first time that Amazon picks at chip design. The company worked with MediaTek to create a chip for its Echo smart speakers, which increased the Alexa response time. It also has the machine learning chip Inferentia, and now Trainium, which will soon be available for customers using its EC2 services.

⇨ The Verge, Mitchell Clark, “Amazon is reportedly working on custom networking chips.”

2021-03-30