Qualcomm stated that it will produce customized data center central processing units (CPUs) that will be connected to Nvidia's artificial intelligence (AI) chips using Nvidia's technology.
Nvidia's chips dominate the AI market, but have always been used in conjunction with CPUs, which have traditionally been dominated by Intel and AMD. Nvidia has entered the CPU market, utilizing Arm technology to design a chip and develop its own 'Grace' CPU.
On May 18th, Qualcomm announced its return to the data center CPU market. In the 2010s, Qualcomm began developing an Arm based CPU and testing it with Meta Platforms, but these efforts were scaled back due to cost cuts and legal challenges.
After acquiring a team of former Apple chip designers in 2021, Qualcomm quietly restarted these efforts and once again negotiated with Meta regarding data center CPUs. Qualcomm confirmed last week that it has signed a letter of understanding with Saudi Arabian AI company Humain to develop customized data center CPUs.
Qualcomm stated that its future chips will adopt Nvidia technology to help it communicate quickly with Nvidia's graphics processing units (GPUs), which are the backbone of its AI chip product portfolio.
Qualcomm CEO Amon said, "With the ability to connect our custom processors to NVIDIA's rack level architecture, we are advancing our shared vision of high-performance computing (HPC) and energy-efficient computing to data centers
