AI vendors are turning to custom hardware as Microsoft winds back the clock on Windows
- ID
- 17193
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 24 Aug 2026, 6:57 PM
- Fetched
- 24 Aug 2026, 7:48 PM
- Provider
- The Register
- Category
- technology
- Original URL
- https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/08/24/ai-vendors-are-turning-to-custom-hardware-as-microsoft-winds-back-the-clock-on-windows/5291293
- Source URL
- https://www.theregister.com/headlines.atom
Summary
- Score
- 5.5
- Created
- 24 Aug 2026, 7:49 PM
- Tags
- Audience
- developersai_ml_learnersai_agent_users
What happened
AI vendors are increasingly turning to alternate silicon like Cerebras and Marvell for inference workloads, moving beyond exclusive reliance on Nvidia GPUs in the datacenter. Waymo is designing custom chips for its robotaxis instead of using off-the-shelf Intel silicon. Meanwhile, Microsoft is belatedly adding long-requested Windows 11 features: movable taskbar after five years, better context menu controls, and NPU activity visibility in Task Manager.
Why it matters
If you're building inference-heavy AI products, the silicon landscape is diversifying beyond Nvidia GPUs—Cerebras and Marvell are real alternatives worth evaluating for cost and latency, not just press-release names. For Windows users shipping on-device AI, the new Task Manager NPU visibility finally lets you profile what your local models are actually consuming.
Discussion angle
Is it worth architecting your inference pipeline to be silicon-agnostic now, or is betting on Cerebras/Marvell still premature given Nvidia's software ecosystem lock-in?