Google Cloud and Intel expand their multiyear partnership to co-develop custom chips for AI infrastructure

Google Cloud and Intel announced an expanded multiyear partnership that will see Google continue using Intel's Xeon processors, including the latest Xeon 6 chips, for AI, cloud, and inference workloads, while also expanding their co-development of custom ASIC-based infrastructure processing units. The IPU co-development partnership began in 2021 and focuses on chips that offload data center management tasks from CPUs, freeing them for other workloads. The deal comes as demand for CPUs surges across the industry, with companies increasingly recognizing that training AI models requires GPUs but running them at scale requires a balanced mix of CPUs and other infrastructure chips.