Intel is out for NVIDIA's crown, despite the former being a central processing unit (CPU) company and the latter being a graphics processing unit (GPU) company, as it unveils its new artificial intelligence (AI) chips to compete with the GPU manufacturer.
Intel has revealed its new Neural Network Processor (NNP) family named Nervana for AI capability. It should be noted, however, that this sort of technology is not for consumer PCs but for data centers and servers, a market which NVIDIA is dominating right now with their AI processors. Because of the workload for AI in data centers and network systems, NVIDIA's GPUs have been better suited for the task, as confirmed by The Verge.
Intel's most powerful processor brands, Core and Xeon chips are not exactly capable of handling the AI computations, which entails computer vision, voice recognition, and other tasks needed to run matrix calculations on gigantic arrays. Thus, the company has now decided to release the Nervana NNPs.
Intel was not very specific on how the Nervana NPPs best NVIDIA's AI GPUs but has stated that it will be able to do general AI computation tasks, especially for both training and executing deep learning algorithms. The AI processor can also make a pool of the same chips together and act as one big processor using its massive bi-directional data transfer capability, meaning that more processors can essentially make their speed increase exponentially.
Intel hopes that it can once again regain the AI market from its competitors NVIDIA and Qualcomm, as the latter two have chip architectures that are inherently capable of AI-related tasks. NVIDIA is even reportedly being used by companies like Google and Facebook for training AI algorithms, while Qualcomm is good at making chips that can execute these algorithms. This is something Intel plans to change.
The race for AI is showing no signs of slowing down, however, as NVIDIA has also released its new V100 processors for AI apps.
No exact release date has been revealed for Intel's Nervana, but the company plans a launch by the end of 2017.
