Amazon rolls out Trainium3 AI chip to challenge Nvidia’s dominance

AWS has launched its in-house AI processor, Trainium3, marking a fresh push to compete with established players in the AI-hardware market. The chip and its associated UltraServer platform were unveiled at the launch event in Las Vegas.

According to Amazon, servers powered by Trainium3 deliver more than four times the performance of the previous generation while using around 40% less energy. Several AI firms, including startups working on large language models, are already utilising the new hardware to reduce their inference or training costs.

Looking ahead, AWS has signalled plans for a follow-up chip, Trainium4, which is expected to integrate with Nvidia’s NVLink Fusion interconnect technology. That would permit hybrid deployments combining Amazon’s ASICs with traditional GPUs, potentially appealing to AI workloads already built around Nvidia’s ecosystem.

The move highlights a broader trend: major tech firms are increasingly investing in their own AI infrastructure, aiming to reduce dependence on dominant vendors and lower costs. As AWS scales out its custom chips, the AI infrastructure market is poised to become more diverse with price-performance and energy efficiency as key differentiators, rather than raw hardware dominance alone.

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