Microsoft expands its custom silicon portfolio with an in-house security chip and a DPU

Microsoft is already using in-house developed Azure Maia AI accelerators and Azure Cobalt for its cloud infrastructure needs. At Ignite 2024, Microsoft announced the expansion of its custom silicon portfolio with the new Azure Boost DPU and the Azure Integrated HSM.

Azure Boost DPU is Microsoft's first in-house DPU based on the acquisition of Fungible last year. Azure Boost DPU is targeted towards data-centric workloads to deliver high efficiency and low power consumption. Microsoft claims that Azure Boost DPU can absorb multiple components of a traditional server into a single dedicated silicon.

Microsoft is planning to use DPUs in its cloud servers to run storage workloads at three times less a third of the power and four times the performance compared to traditional servers.

Azure Integrated HSM is a new in-house developed security chip to harden key management. This allows encryption and signing keys to remain within the bounds of the HSM. This hardware-based approach will improve performance without affecting latency.

Similar to Azure Boost DPU, Microsoft is planning to use Azure Integrated HSM in every new server in Microsoft's data centers starting next year. This new chip will support both confidential and general-purpose cloud workloads running on Azure.

When it comes to cloud infrastructure, Microsoft is not just working on silicon. They are also working on new cooling technologies. Microsoft's next-generation liquid cooling ‘sidekick’ rack (heat exchanger unit) can be retrofitted into existing Azure data centers to support the cooling of AI infrastructure involving the latest NVIDIA GB200 and others.

Today, Microsoft also announced the preview of the new Azure ND GB200 v6 AI-optimized Virtual Machines series. This new VM series features the latest NVIDIA GB200 NVL 72 rackscale design with Quantum InfiniBand networking to deliver improved AI performance.

On the CPU side, Microsoft announced the new Azure HBv5 virtual machines powered by custom AMD EPYC 9V64H processors with support for up to 7 TB/s of memory bandwidth. The Azure HBv5 virtual machines preview will be available in 2025.

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