Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) continues to solidify its position as a frontrunner in the technology sector, recently unveiling an innovative small language model named Mu on June 23. This cutting-edge AI tool is tailored for seamless local operation on personal computers, particularly those equipped with the new Copilot+ PCs. In a departure from traditional larger AI models that depend on cloud processing, Mu harnesses the power of a device’s Neural Processing Unit (NPU), allowing for swift responses while minimizing power consumption and memory usage.
Technical Innovations Behind Mu
Mu is a compact yet powerful 330 million parameter encoder-decoder language model, meticulously optimized for small-scale deployment on NPUs. The architecture of Mu has been fine-tuned to align with the hardware’s parallelism and memory constraints, ensuring peak operational efficiency. Insights gleaned from Microsoft’s previous Phi models informed its development, and Mu was pre-trained on an extensive dataset comprising hundreds of billions of high-quality educational tokens.
To bolster its performance despite a reduced parameter count, Mu underwent advanced fine-tuning techniques, including distillation and low-rank adaptation. Additionally, it features transformer enhancements such as Dual LayerNorm, Rotary Positional Embeddings (RoPE), and Grouped-Query Attention (GQA). Initially, users will experience Mu’s capabilities through the Settings function within the Windows operating system, where it will utilize natural language processing to translate user inputs into actionable system commands.
As Microsoft continues to innovate and expand its offerings in software, services, devices, and solutions, the launch of Mu marks a significant step forward in on-device AI technology. While the potential of MSFT as an investment remains noteworthy, some analysts suggest that other AI stocks may present greater upside potential with less associated risk. For those interested in exploring undervalued AI stocks poised to gain from current economic trends, a free report highlighting the best short-term AI stock is available.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
