Nov 12 (Reuters) - Amazon.com's ( AMZN ) cloud computing

unit on Tuesday said it will offer free computing power to

researchers who want to use its custom artificial intelligence

chips, aiming to challenge Nvidia's ( NVDA ) popularity among

those researchers.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) said it will offer credits to use

its cloud data centers that it values at $110 million to

researchers who want to tap Trainium, its chip for developing

artificial intelligence models that competes with chips from

Nvidia ( NVDA ), as well as Advanced Micro Devices ( AMD ) and Alphabet's

cloud division.

AWS said researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and the

University of California, Berkeley, are taking part in the

program. The company plans to make 40,000 of the

first-generation Trainium chips available for the program.

The move comes as AWS, still the largest cloud computing

company by sales, has seen a sharp challenge from Microsoft ( MSFT )

as software developers look to harness new types of

chips for AI work. AWS is hoping to gain attention for its own

AI chips by taking a different strategy than Nvidia ( NVDA ), said Gadi

Hutt, who leads business development for the AI chips at AWS.

To program Nvidia's ( NVDA ) chips, most AI developers use what is

called Cuda, Nvidia's ( NVDA ) flagship software, rather than programming

the chip directly. AWS instead plans to publish documentation

about the most fundamental part of its chip - what is called the

instruction set architecture - and let customers program the

chip directly.

Hutt said the approach is aimed at luring large customers

who might want to make small tweaks that could add up to big

gains when using tens of thousands of chips at a time.

"Think about folks that are using infrastructure and putting

hundreds of millions of dollars, if not more" toward rented

computing power, Hutt said. "They would take any opportunity

possible to increase performance and reduce the cost."