Amazon, the American multinational technology company, is said to be currently working on custom networking chips. These silicon chips may be used to design community switches. The idea to enhance the inside infrastructure by designing silicon chips started to surface in 2015 when the company acquired an Israeli chipmaking agency Annapurna Labs for USD350 million.
How will the custom networking chips benefit the company?
The project of the custom silicon chips will bring several short and long-term benefits to the technology firm. These are as follows.
Infrastructure expansion
Amazon Web Services, a subsidiary of Amazon, offers cloud computing solutions to individuals, organisations and governments. The custom networking chips will help the company further expand its Information Technology infrastructure.
Clear up bottlenecks
Amazon’s projects extensively rely on silicon chips. Being a tech giant, silicon chips are used in the backend in all the services provides by the company. As a result, they become bottlenecks in the Amazon software program. The design of silicon chips within the company will help clear the bottleneck and enhance the project pipeline.
Self-reliance
Amazon heavily depends on Broadcom for silicon chips that are the core element in the switches designed by the company. The indigenous production of silicon chips will help Amazon become self-reliant in the procurement of silicon wafers. Amazon has already started taking small steps towards self-reliance as the machine studying software program already runs on Annapurna chips.
Increased Supply
Self-reliance doe not mean merely catering to self-requirements, but also fulfiling the needs of others. The increased production of silicon chips will help Amazon find customers of the chip and raise revenue. This will demand more dedicated management of machines and the demands of the enterprises.
Is Amazon building a silicon product first time?
This is not the first time when Amazon is designing a silicon product. There has been an instance when the company collaborated with other firms dealing with silicon chips. Amazon previously cooperated with MediaTek, a Taiwanese fabless semiconductor company to design a silicon chip. The chip was created to enhance the response time of Alexa in Amazon’s Echo Echo sensible speaker.
Amazon is constantly working on AWS Trainium which is the second custom machine learning (ML) chip designed by the subsidiary company. The chip is designed to provide high performance while training Machine Learning models on cloud platforms. It is evident that the company would require its personal silicon chips to fuel the project.
Which other tech-giants are working on silicon chips?
The ability to produce silicon chips helps companies to customise the hardware requirements as per the projects. Recently, big tech companies like Google and Microsoft have started working to develop custom chips for their gadgets. Apple is not a beginner in developing custom chips for its devices. The M1 chip of Apple has already proved its potency in terms of processing capabilities.
Amazon might not be a leader in the smartphone industry. However, self-reliance for the silicon chips would surely bring more specialisation in its cloud computing framework.
For the latest gadget and tech news, and gadget reviews, follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. For newest tech & gadget videos subscribe to our YouTube Channel. You can also stay up to date with the Gadget Bridge Android App.
