Microsoft Build 2024: Cloud infra updates include Cobalt 100-based VMs, access to Copilot in Azure

Additionally, IC3, the platform that powers customer conversations in Microsoft Teams, is adopting Cobalt to serve its growing customer base more efficiently, achieving up to 45% better performance on Cobalt 100 VMs, Khan added.

Alongside the Azure VMs for Cobalt CPUs, Microsoft made AMD’s ND MI300X series of processors generally available for Azure. The ND MI300X VM, which combines eight AMD MI300X Instinct accelerators, will provide enterprises with better cost performance than rivals, especially for inferencing large language models, such as GPT-4, according to Khan.

Microsoft also released a new provisioning service, dubbed Azure Compute Fleet, which simplifies provisioning of Azure compute capacity across different VM types, availability zones, and pricing models. This will enable enterprises to meet desired scale, performance, and cost by enabling users to control VM group behaviors automatically and programmatically, Khan explained.