Amazon says its AI chips will work with popular coding language, challenging Nvidia

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct 19 : Amazon.com is introducing a new tool that allows its custom AI chips to run code written in the most popular AI coding language without modification, seeking to erode the advantage that underpins Nvidia's dominance in the AI computing market.

TorchNeuron lets developers run code written in a language called PyTorch on Amazon's Trainium AI chips with a single configuration change and no rewriting needed, according to Amazon's Annapurna Labs chip unit.

Amazon, which plans to announce the software at a developer conference in Silicon Valley on Monday, said the software will be publicly released as a free and open-source offering.

PyTorch, the open-source framework stewarded by Meta, is used by most AI developers. Nvidia has spent more than a decade on its software tool called Cuda that makes PyTorch code run well on Nvidia chips.

Other cloud computing players such as Google, which also has its own custom AI chips, are also working to lure away developers from Nvidia with better PyTorch tools.

Colin Brace, vice president of software for Annapurna Labs, said the move was aimed at reducing the number of steps AI developers must take to try Amazon's in-house chips. 

"This has been about meeting customers where they're at," he told Reuters in an interview.

Brace said more than 30 early customers — spanning robotics, world models and voice AI — are using the new software, and that the switch to Amazon's chips can result in steep cost savings.