Intel Fires Up Rivalry With Nvidia, TSMC With AI Chip Launch

Intel Corporation INTC launched a new chip called Gaudi2, which focused on artificial intelligence computing. Intel also launched a new chip, Greco, for inferencing work: taking an AI algorithm and making a prediction or identifying an object.

Gaudi2's training throughput performance for the ResNet-50 computer vision model and the BERT natural language processing model delivers twice the training throughput over the Nvidia Corp NVDA A100-80GB GPU.

The launch marks Intel's more significant push into the AI chip market currently dominated by Nvidia, Reuters reports.

"CUDA is not a moat that Nvidia can really stand on for long," said the chief business officer at Habana Labs, Eitan Medina, adding that Intel's software platform is an open standard, free to download and use from GitHub, the software development site.

Medina said the Gaudi2 was twice as fast as Habana's previous AI chip and manufactured at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Ltd's TSM 7-nanometer transistor technology from 16-nanometers previously.

Gaudi2 is the second generation processor by Habana Labs, an Israeli AI chip startup Intel bought in late 2019 for $2 billion. 

Prying market share away from Nvidia has been challenging as many AI researchers, and companies are comfortable using Nvidia's software platform, CUDA. 

So, in addition to new chips for AI computing, Intel has been focusing on its software development.

Intel's data center and AI head said the AI chip market would likely grow some 25% a year to reach around $50 billion in the next five years. "We intend to invest and innovate to lead this market," she said, adding that increasing the investments will be in software, expanding Intel's team, and buying other companies.

Price Action: INTC shares traded higher by 1.25% at $44.56 premarket on the last check Wednesday.

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