Microsoft on Tuesday revealed new custom chips aimed at powering workloads on its Azure cloud and bolstering security, particularly a new hardware accelerator that can manage data processing, networking and storage-related tasks. The Azure Boost DPU is Microsoft’s first data processing unit, designed for “data-centric workloads with high efficiency and low power,” the company said. Microsoft expects future DPU-equipped Azure servers to run storage workloads at four times the performance of existing servers while consuming three times less power. “Designed for scale-out, composable workloads on Azure, the Azure Boost DPU delivers efficiency across storage, networking, acceleration, and more for its cloud infrastructure,” Microsoft wrote in a blog post shared with TechCrunch. Of course, those benchmarks don’t tell us much. On which workloads is the Azure Boost DPU more power efficient, and compared to which existing hardware is it faster, exactly? Microsoft didn’t say, nor did it mention when Azure customers can expect to see these gains. The Azure Boost DPU likely has its origins in Fungible, a DPU fabricator that Microsoft acquired last December. Microsoft reportedly paid around $190 million for the company, which was founded by former Apple and Juniper Networks engineers. The Fungible team joined Microsoft’s infrastructure engineering division following the acquisition.

Full report : Microsoft launches two data center infrastructure chips to speed AI applications.