Google and Intel are deepening their AI infrastructure partnership

Google and Intel announced an expanded multi-year partnership on Thursday for Google Cloud to continue using Intel AI infrastructure and continue developing processors together.

Google Cloud will use Intel Xeon processors, including Intel’s latest Xeon 6 chips, for AI, cloud, and inference tasks. The company has used Intel’s various Xeon processors for decades.

The two companies will also expand joint development of custom infrastructure processing units (IPUs), which help accelerate and manage data center tasks by offloading them from central processing units (CPUs).

This chip development partnership, which began in 2021, will focus on custom ASIC-based IPUs.

Intel declined to share any information regarding pricing for the deal.

This expansion comes at a time when the industry is hungry for central processing units. While GPUs are used to develop and train AI models, CPUs are essential for running AI models and within the overall AI infrastructure.

“AI is reshaping how we build and scale infrastructure,” Intel CEO Lip Bo Tan said in a company press release. “Scaling AI requires more than just accelerators – it requires balanced systems. CPUs and IPUs are key to delivering the performance, efficiency, and flexibility that modern AI workloads demand.”

More companies have shifted their focus to central processing units (CPUs) in recent months as there is a growing shortage of chips.

SoftBank-owned Arm Holdings recently announced the Arm AGI CPU, the first chip produced by the semiconductor giant itself, amid a global CPU crunch.