Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) has announced its third-generation Maia AI chip, designed to handle AI tasks across its products and services, and is expected to deliver 40% more tokens per watt than leading GPU-based systems.

The chip has been developed to handle the actual AI workloads Microsoft runs. The third generation of its Azure Maia program focuses on AI inference, which is the process of using trained AI models to generate responses and results. It is designed to handle tasks that require large amounts of memory, long inputs and intensive processing.

Maia 300 uses an advanced low-precision format called MXFP4 to reduce the memory bandwidth needed for calculations and storing key-value cache data. This helps AI models process longer inputs, handle more requests and use computing resources more efficiently without increasing power consumption.

The chip also uses a software-defined dataflow architecture and AI-assisted kernel optimization to improve how data moves between computing, memory and networking systems. By reducing unnecessary data movement and making better use of available resources, Microsoft aims to improve performance while consuming less power than traditional GPU-based systems.

Looking ahead, Maia 300 features a chiplet-based design that separates computing, memory control and input-output functions into different components. This flexible approach allows the chip to be adapted to different workloads and computing requirements.

MSFT was trading at $542.08, up 1.31 percent on the Nasdaq.

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