Apple Does Not Just Take Money from Google
August 12, 2024
In an apparent snub to Nvidia, reports MacRumors, “Apple Used Google Tensor Chips to Develop Apple Intelligence.” The decision to go with Google’s TPUv5p chips over Nvidia’s hardware is surprising, since Nvidia has been dominating the AI processor market. (Though some suggest that will soon change.) Citing Apple’s paper on the subject, writer Hartley Charlton reveals:
“The paper reveals that Apple utilized 2,048 of Google’s TPUv5p chips to build AI models and 8,192 TPUv4 processors for server AI models. The research paper does not mention Nvidia explicitly, but the absence of any reference to Nvidia’s hardware in the description of Apple’s AI infrastructure is telling and this omission suggests a deliberate choice to favor Google’s technology. The decision is noteworthy given Nvidia’s dominance in the AI processor market and since Apple very rarely discloses its hardware choices for development purposes. Nvidia’s GPUs are highly sought after for AI applications due to their performance and efficiency. Unlike Nvidia, which sells its chips and systems as standalone products, Google provides access to its TPUs through cloud services. Customers using Google’s TPUs have to develop their software within Google’s ecosystem, which offers integrated tools and services to streamline the development and deployment of AI models. In the paper, Apple’s engineers explain that the TPUs allowed them to train large, sophisticated AI models efficiently. They describe how Google’s TPUs are organized into large clusters, enabling the processing power necessary for training Apple’s AI models.”
Over the next two years, Apple says, it plans to spend $5 billion in AI server enhancements. The paper gives a nod to ethics, promising no private user data is used to train its AI models. Instead, it uses publicly available web data and licensed content, curated to protect user privacy. That is good. Now what about the astronomical power and water consumption? Apple has no reassuring words for us there. Is it because Apple is paying Google, not just taking money from Google?
Cynthia Murrell, August 12, 2024
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