Huawei seeks to seize the AI throne from Silicon Valley

Chinese technology giant Huawei is taking its AI strategy up a gear in a bid to seize the throne from Silicon Valley incumbents. During HUAWEI CONNECT 2018 in Shanghai, the company announced how it will take on the likes of Nvidia and Qualcomm. The first part of that strategy is new hardware. Huawei unveiled new chipsets it’s calling the Ascend 910 and Ascend 310. These chips are both designed for AI but target different use cases. The 910 is targeted at data centres; a territory...

10 October 2018 | Hardware

Nvidia CEO is ‘happy to help’ if Tesla’s AI chip ambitions fail

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has teased his company is 'happy to help’ if Tesla fails its goal to launch a competitor AI chip. Tesla currently uses Nvidia’s silicon for its vehicles. The company’s CEO, Elon Musk, said earlier this month that he’s a “big fan” of Nvidia but that an in-house AI chip would be able to outperform those of the leading processor manufacturer. During a conference call on Thursday, Huang said its customers are “super excited” about  Nvidia's Xavier...

17 August 2018 | Hardware

Intel’s AI chip business is now worth $1bn per year, $10bn by 2022

The size of Intel’s AI chip business today is huge, but it’s nothing compared to where it expects to be in just four years’ time. Speaking during the company's Innovation Summit in Santa Clara, Intel Executive VP Navin Shenoy revealed a new focus on AI development. The company’s AI-focused Xeon processors generated $1 billion in revenues during 2017. By 2022, it expects to be generating around $10 billion per year. AI is set to be implemented in many areas of our lives in the...

9 August 2018 | Hardware

Nvidia seeks pole position in AI for connected cars with DRIVE Xavier SoC

Nvidia has announced its first Xavier autonomous machine processors are up and running for the company’s self-driving car platform, DRIVE. Xavier is designed to power the NVIDIA DRIVE software stack which has been expanded to a trio of AI platforms covering every aspect of the experience inside next-generation automobiles. DRIVE AV — This part of the DRIVE platform was also available in the previous generation and uses neural networks to perform the calculations required for...

8 January 2018 | Connected Cars

Musk: Tesla is building its own AI chips

In an unsurprising revelation, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has finally admitted his company is building its own AI chips. Tesla is a pioneering and forward-looking company and, as our readers know well, AI is the future of just about everything. It would have been a safe bet Tesla intends to be at the forefront. During a Tesla-hosted party at the NIPS intelligence conference in Long Beach, which has been called ‘draft day’ for how AI companies use it to recruit talent, Musk told attendees: "I...

8 December 2017 | Connected Cars

UK AI chipmaker Graphcore raises millions from Silicon Valley investor

graphcore ai

Graphcore, an ambitious UK startup building dedicated AI chips, has raised millions in a new round of funding from one of Silicon Valley’s top investors. Sequoia Capital has previously invested in companies such as Apple, Google, and WhatsApp. The investor has now led a $50m (£38.2m) funding round in Graphcore — which has its headquarters in Bristol, UK. Dedicated AI chips are set to boom in the coming years with implementation in smartphones, connected vehicles, IoT devices, and...

13 November 2017 | Funding

Facebook is helping Intel with AI for the first Neural Network Processor

The CEO of Intel has revealed Facebook is providing its AI knowledge ahead of the launch of the world’s first Neural Network Processor. Brian Krzanich made the comment during an on-stage interview at the WSJD Live conference in Laguna Beach, California. The news Intel is working on its own AI chips is no surprise, but the choice of partner may be. "This is the first piece of silicon," Krzanich said. "We have a whole family planned for this, (Facebook) is helping us, along with others,...

18 October 2017 | Hardware