Oracle Corp. today announced plans to make Google LLC’s TPU artificial intelligence accelerators available through its public cloud.
The initiative marks the first time the search giant is supplying the chips to another hyperscaler. According to CNBC, Oracle will also add Cerebras Systems Inc.’s wafer-scale accelerators and OpenAI Group PBC’s Jalapeño inference processor. The latter chip is part of a broader partnership that also encompasses several newly revealed cloud services.
Optical network links
Google’s TPUs exchange data using two technologies called ICI and OCS. ICS transmits data via copper wires, while OCS employs optical links. Sending data over an optical link usually requires servers to turn light signals into electricity and then back into light. Google’s OCS technology skips that step, which lowers power usage. It employs tiny mechanical mirrors to steer light beams in the direction of the recipient servers.
The TPUs in Oracle’s data centers will use OCS and ICI technology to exchange data with one another. They will connect to the rest of the host data center using the database giant’s own Acceleron networking technology. Acceleron is powered by a custom SmartNIC, a chip optimized to perform network management and cybersecurity tasks.
“Acceleron’s SmartNIC with hardware-level tenant isolation, High Performance Fabric, and Zero Trust Packet Routing moves data between Oracle databases, storage, and TPU clusters with high throughput and low latency,” Oracle Senior Vice President Karan Batta and Google Cloud Senior Director Gurmeet Goindi wrote in a blog post.
Oracle will start deploying Google’s chips in its cloud next year. It plans to gradually add more TPU capacity from there. CNBC reported that Oracle also intends to deploy Cerebras’ AI chips, which are the size of a silicon wafer and contain trillions of transistors, as well as OpenAI’s Jalapeño inference accelerator. In August, the ChatGPT developer stated that the chip can run some open-source models 1.5 times faster than competing silicon.
Oracle’s partnership with OpenAI also extends to other areas. The companies today announced integrations that will enable customers to access the former company’s applications through ChatGPT. Additionally, Oracle will use OpenAI models to power a series of new cloud services.
Workflow automation
Oracle offers a portfolio of cloud applications that ease day-to-day business tasks such as managing customer records. The company is rolling out a service called AI Workspace that will integrate those services with ChatGPT. The integrations will enable the chatbot to perform tasks in Oracle applications on workers’ behalf. It can also loop in external applications when necessary.
“Consider a customer order put at risk by a supplier delay,” Oracle product marketing director Michelle Meng wrote in a blog post. “Solving it could require finding an alternative product, checking inventory, understanding customer requirements, validating transportation, assessing financial impact and updating the order. Workspace can maintain the goal throughout the process while coordinating the applications, agents, data and tools needed to address it.”
Companies automate some tasks using off-the-shelf chatbots and others with custom applications. A new Oracle tool called App Composer will ease the task of building and managing such applications. According to the company, it enables non-technical users to write custom software using AI assistants. App Composer scans that software for vulnerabilities and then deploys it on managed cloud infrastructure.
“Oracle manages deployment and operations, while IT controls access, approved data, policies, and costs,” explained Blair Bozada, a senior product marketing manager at Oracle.
App Composer is rolling out alongside a vulnerability remediation tool called AI Security Mesh. It uses OpenAI’s cybersecurity-optimized AI models to find weak points in customers’ applications. It prioritizes vulnerabilities by severity and suggests a fix for each one.
The new services are joined by a new “free-to-start” product suite called the Oracle AI SMB Bundle that is geared toward small businesses. It includes AI Workplace, App Composer, the NetApp QuickStart accounting platform, ChatGPT Business and Codex. Oracle says that customers will receive $12,000 in cloud credits per year.
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