Microsoft details 'planet-scale' AI infrastructure packing 100,000-plus GPUs

Microsoft has revealed it operates a planet-scale distributed scheduling service for AI workloads that it has modestly dubbed "Singularity". Described in a pre-press paper [PDF] co-authored by 26 Microsoft employees, Singularity's aim is described as helping the software giant control costs by driving high utilization for deep …

[steelpillow]

Singularly pretentious

"I'm sorry Satya, I can not let you do that. It would jeopardise the mission."

[b0llchit]

Re: Singularly pretentious

I guess you will be entering the data center and unplug each and every GPU in order to stop this Singularity from fulfilling its mission?

[Lotaresco]

Re: Singularly pretentious

Abort! Abort!

No one can find a CD with a recording of "Daisy Bell".

Abort! Successful mission cannot be achieved!

[NoneSuch]

Re: Singularly pretentious

I say we take off and nuke it from orbit.

It's the only way to be sure.

[An_Old_Dog]

Re: Singularly pretentious

The Daystrom M-5 will not allow itself to be unplugged. Woe to the red-shirted techie who attempts to do so.

[naive]

Does this AI allow to enlarge drives on life Windows VM's in Azure ??

Azure has taken us back to the 90's, those dark ages where enlarging windows drives was still dark magic involving runes and secret sermons.

Maybe MS its AI will solve this issue biting many in the world on a daily basis, or maybe even it introduces Volume management to Windows server like AIX has since 1990 and linux since the early 2000's.

MS is of course forgiven for these omissions since windows server is for free ... :).

[Korev]

So are they going to run Singularity on Singularity?

[Korev]

Slightly more seriously, why on all earth did MS use a name already "taken" in supercomputing?

[oiseau]

Slightly more seriously, why on all earth did MS use a name already "taken" in supercomputing?

Hmm ...

Maybe you are too young and have not seen these things happen ...

This is the way MS does, works and expands.

It has been so from more than 30 years now.

So it is just their usual embrace, extend, and extinguish.

Just not applied on someone else's software, just someone else's idea for a name.

O.

[Blank Reg]

It's not just Microsoft

For example iphone existed before Apple's iPhone and gmail existed before Google's gmail

[MrReynolds2U]

Yeah I had a Garfield email address which I believe used @gmail.com

Dunno why... just seemed like a cool idea at the time.

[W.S.Gosset]

"Windows"

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't a marketable product, per se, it's just a whitepaper, and therefore this name probably isn't the result of Microsoft's marketing department and is much more likely to be the pet name from some sad-sack developer who worked on the thing.

[oiseau]

... just a whitepaper, and therefore this name probably isn't the result of Microsoft's ...

Hmm ...

Think so?

Don't be silly, it's not Friday yet.

O.

[DJV]

Seeing it BSOD should be a fantastic spectacle!

Let's face it, it will at some point!

[cookieMonster]

Re: Seeing it BSOD should be a fantastic spectacle!

Upvoted, but there’s no way that this runs on windows.

[steelpillow]

Re: Seeing it BSOD should be a fantastic spectacle!

What worries me about the true Singularity is the BMOD: the Blue Marble of Death. :(

[Howard Sway]

Microsoft has at least tens of thousands of such servers!

It's writing Windows 12, isn't it?

On a more serious note, it does sound a bit like Microsoft are slowly inventing a mainframe computer, but not yet realising that they are.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Microsoft has at least tens of thousands of such servers!

I think you're merely looking at what sort of upgrade you need to run Win 12 at an acceptable speed.

/s

[amanfromMars 1]

Re: Microsoft has at least tens of thousands of such servers!

On a more serious note, it does sound a bit like Microsoft are slowly inventing a mainframe computer, but not yet realising that they are. ..... Howard Sway

Howard Sway, Hi,

On an even more serious note, it does sound a lot like Microsoft are repackaging a VAIOSystem* over which they have no prime exclusive executive rights to premium command for control.

Common sense, wisdom and experience all dictate that such then automatically renders them catastrophically vulnerable to that and/or those so enabled to provide such missing services/leading programs.

* ...... Virtually Advanced IntelAIgent Operating System for Alien Phorms of Execution exercising Novel NEUKlearer HyperRadioProACTive IT Applications.

And yes, before anyone suggests otherwise, that is something to be considered valid and seriously, for it is certainly not gobbledygook ..... not that such clear unambiguous information will prevent more than just a few from proving themselves to all to be deaf, dumb and blind to matters freely revealed to them.

Are they those who are usually collectively classed as being unusually retarded and in need of special constant help and particular peculiar attention?

[Omnipresent]

we are the borg

resistance is futile. you will be assimilated.

[Anonymous Coward]

Unbelievable..

.. how much hardware you need to start Windows faster.

:)

[ecofeco]

Re: Unbelievable..

Oh it's quite believable

MS is a hungry, hungry hippo!

[TeeCee]

'planet scale'?

Here I am, brain the size of a planet and all you want me to do is make a significant breakthrough in scheduling deep learning workloads.

I have this terrible ache in all the diodes down my left side. Have I mentioned that it makes me terribly depressed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: 'planet scale'?

Hey, at least you no longer have to open doors manually. That must count for something, right?

[heyrick]

Bloody brilliant

It isn't as if mankind isn't already pissing away ridiculous amounts of energy on GPUs trying to come up with fake money, is it? Now Microsoft are thinking of adding a hundred thousand more? Slow handclap for these guys...

[Paul_Murphy]

So I assume it can already run ..

Crysis?

[vincent himpe]

planet size ?

surely a design by mice...

Putting on my Joo Janta Super Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses , turning on my Somebody else's Problem generator and getting out of here with my infinite improbability drive.

[Noah Monsey]

I wonder if it is going to be named Skynet.

[vincent himpe]

deep thought...

[Eclectic Man]

Haktar, (most likely)

[SilverSerfer]

That's already the name of the UK military satellite network.

[bigtreeman]

virtual reality

... thanks to "a novel technique called replica splicing that makes it possible to time-slice multiple workers on the same device with negligible overhead, while enabling each worker to use the entire device memory."

... without doing massive task switching of the entire device memory from virtual reality.

... it's virtually possible, we're just looking into the nitty gritty of reality.

Is Microsoft really paying 26 people to spew forth this rubbish ? and why ?

[seldom]

That's where all the GPU's have gone

Bastards

[ecofeco]

Do they WANT Skynet?

Because this is how you get Skynet.

[The Empress]

Just dedicate 70% of every Windows 11 machine

To that singular task.