Amazon ropes Qualcomm into something, something AI, networking chips
Multi-generation chip collab is more buzzwords than compute
On Tuesday, Amazon Web Services (AWS) collaborated with mobile chip leader Qualcomm to create customized silicon for artificial intelligence inference and 1.6 Tbps optical networking hardware, aiming to connect both systems. The agreement's total value could reach $60 billion through September 2036. Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon expressed enthusiasm about partnering with AWS to deliver breakthrough performance in AI infrastructure.
Qualcomm's involvement may entail the creation of fully custom silicon, chiplets, or tailored versions of its datacenter accelerator portfolio. This collaboration follows similar partnerships between cloud providers and chip manufacturers, such as AWS and Intel, as well as Microsoft and AMD.
Qualcomm's contribution to this partnership could involve fully custom silicon, chiplets, or customized variants of its datacenter accelerator lineup. The new rack-scale AI platform, introduced during Qualcomm's annual investor day, replaces expensive high-bandwidth memory (HBM) with Qualcomm's high-bandwidth compute, enabling higher "effective" memory bandwidth using less costly LPDDR memory by offloading some processing to the memory's base die.
Expected to launch next year as part of Qualcomm's AI250-series of Dragonfly rack systems, this technology could potentially be integrated into AWS datacenter servers, similar to how Intel customizes its Xeon 6 processors for AWS.
Additionally, Qualcomm is developing a new datacenter CPU called the C1000, projected to reach speeds of 5 GHz and scale beyond 250 cores in the second half of 2028. Amazon and Qualcomm have not provided further details on the scope of their partnership, but the networking aspect of the collaboration is more apparent. AWS will incorporate Qualcomm's serializer-deserializers (SerDes) and optical digital signal processors (DSPs—likely acquired with the purchase of Alphawave Semi earlier this year—to boost port speeds to 1.6 Tbps.
This highlights the need for high-speed optical interconnects in scaling AI infrastructure and the potential for Qualcomm to supply AWS with optical pluggables or near- or co-packaged optics.
Written by urgent.news from The Register Science's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
