By Stephen Nellis
(Reuters) - Chip supplier Nvidia Corp <NVDA.O> on Monday said it was teaming up with VMware Inc <VMW.N> and Amazon.com Inc's <AMZN.O> cloud division to court large businesses looking to host artificial intelligence programs in Amazon's cloud.
Nvidia got its start with chips to make computer games more realistic, but in recent years has shifted to supplying chips that speed up artificial intelligence tasks, such as teaching computers to recognise images. Once the domain of Silicon Valley tech firms, artificial intelligence technology is filtering to mainstream businesses that use it for tasks like seeking unseen patterns in their financials to help with forecasting and cost controls.
Many of those mainstream businesses use software made by VMware to help shuffle computing work back and forth between their own data centres and cloud data centres owned by Amazon Web Services, depending on where the cost is best. But that has been difficult to do with computer programs that rely on Nvidia chips for a speed boost.
On Monday, the companies said Nvidia intends to release a new piece of software called vComputeServer to address the issue and let their joint customers move Nvida-aided computing work around more easily. The companies did not say when the software would be released.
(This story has been refiled to correct "w" in VWware name to lower case in headline and lead.)
(Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by Leslie Adler)
