Apple made a surprising appearance at Amazon Web Services' annual re:Invent conference Tuesday, revealing extensive use of AWS's custom chips and infrastructure for its AI development, including the recently launched Apple Intelligence features.
Key Points:
- Apple is using AWS's custom AI chips for its new Apple Intelligence features, achieving over 40% efficiency gains
- The iPhone maker plans to evaluate AWS's new Trainium 2 chips, expecting up to 50% improvement in training speed
- Apple's endorsement comes as AWS competes with Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud for AI infrastructure dominance
Benoit Dupin, Apple's senior director of machine learning and AI, took the stage in Las Vegas to detail how the typically secretive iPhone maker leverages AWS's technology. "We have a strong relationship, and the infrastructure is both reliable and able to serve our customers worldwide," Dupin said.
The endorsement marks a significant moment for AWS in its competition with Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud for AI infrastructure dominance. Apple has been using AWS for more than a decade across services including Siri, Apple Maps, and Apple Music, but this public acknowledgment of their AI collaboration is unprecedented.
Apple has achieved notable efficiency gains using AWS's custom silicon. The company reported over 40% improvement in efficiency for machine learning workloads using AWS's Graviton and Inferentia chips compared to traditional x86 instances. Looking ahead, Apple is evaluating AWS's newly announced Trainium 2 chips, with early testing suggesting up to 50% improvements in model training efficiency.
AWS CEO Matt Garman highlighted Apple's role as an early adopter of their AI infrastructure. "Apple came to us and said, 'how can you help us with our Generative AI capabilities, we need infrastructure in order to go build,' and they had this vision for building Apple Intelligence," Garman explained.
While Apple continues to prioritize on-device AI processing for its products, this partnership suggests a hybrid approach to AI development. The company processes simpler queries on iPhone, iPad, or Mac chips but relies on cloud infrastructure for more complex AI tasks and model training.
The move comes as cloud providers race to develop alternatives to Nvidia's dominant AI chips. Apple's endorsement of AWS's custom silicon could signal to other companies that non-Nvidia approaches can be viable for AI development and deployment.
AWS also announced that Trainium 3, its next generation of AI chips, will debut next year, showing its commitment to competing in the AI infrastructure space. The cloud provider is also expected to announce new details about offering NVIDIA Blackwell-based AI servers for rent.
This public endorsement from Apple, known for its selective partnerships and secretive nature, represents a significant win for AWS as it competes for AI infrastructure spending. However, Apple maintains relationships with other cloud providers, including Google Cloud, which it previously used for training iPhone AI services.