Microsoft

Microsoft's Columbia Data Center in Quincy, Washington, has operated for about 20 years and provided significant local benefits, including funding for a new high school and hospital and employing roughly 700 people, or about 9% of the town. Microsoft says it puts communities first by committing to pay for its own power, avoid raising neighbors' electricity rates and replenish more water than it uses. Local electricity rates have risen about 55% over two decades as data centers expanded, lower than state and national increases, while some residents faced displacement during buildouts. Critics and experts urge communities to vet data center plans on cooling technology, size and power sources before approval. » Mere på cbsnews.com

According to insiders, Microsoft and other tech firms have lobbied the U.S. government to stop plans for an import ban on optical transceivers from China. Such a ban would slow the expansion of AI data centers and severely affect Microsoft’s U.S. build-out plans, because Chinese suppliers dominate two-thirds of the global market and U.S. manufacturers could not replace them in the short term. The government is considering a compromise that would target only new 3.2-terabit transceivers and give U.S. producers until 2029 to expand capacity. » Mere på faz.net

Microsoft is rolling out Automatic Super Resolution (Auto SR) to the Xbox Ally X, Xbox Ally X20 and select Windows Copilot Plus PCs. Auto SR now works undocked and on battery and adds support for games running at 1080p, though Microsoft warns handheld/1080p performance may be reduced. A new Performance mode (up to 120fps) and Auto HDR compatibility will arrive via Windows updates. » Mere på theverge.com

Microsoft is ending a lease with Oracle for compute capacity rented in 2023 that used older Nvidia chips, saying they no longer meet current requirements. The company is also questioning other contracts and did not exercise expansion options, for example at Nscale in Texas, because of construction and commissioning delays. At the same time, Microsoft plans to shift more AI inference to its own Maia accelerators, but expects full independence from Nvidia only in the long term. » Mere på heise.de

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says AI is the company's future and imagines the roughly 200,000 employees could use up to 20 million AI agents, while he personally runs up to 100 AI sessions in parallel. Such agents must be fully inspectable and assessable; Microsoft offers Agent 365 as a solution to extend tools like Defender and Entra to AI agents, which costs per user. Nadella stresses the need to convince society and workers of the technology's benefits and raises questions about new jobs, pay and company formation in the AI era. » Mere på golem.de