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Intel
said this week that they have formed a partnership with
Amazon.comof
the cloud computing division to supply the equipment for the training in artificial intelligence of one of the companies acquired by Intel.
The cards running the hardware are designed by Habana, an Israeli-focused AI technology company that Intel (ticker: INTC) acquired about a year ago for $ 2 billion. The announcement, made at an Amazon Web Services event, marks an important moment for Intel, which has yet to release a product capable of directly competing with devices powered by the graphics processing unit for learning to use. ‘AI of his rival.
Nvidia
(NVDA).
According to Intel, Gaudi technology is not powered by GPUs and will cost up to 40% less to train AI. This will be Amazon’s first non-GPU cloud computing division (AMZN) deployed for such training.
In an interview with Barron’sHabana chief commercial officer Eitan Medina said the company expects the technology to launch at AWS in six months.
He added that as AI models become more precise, they also become more complex. “Models are actually getting quite expensive to train, and this is becoming a limiting factor in the growth of the use of AI,” Medina said. “AWS worked with us to resolve this issue with [better] architecture, and allows them to significantly improve cost performance. “
Designing Gaudi technology from scratch for AI purposes means that engineers at Habana were able to create a processor architecture that was specially suited for training AI models. This translates to a higher quality device, said Medina, which is also more efficient and therefore much less expensive to use.
Technology can evolve as needed as Gaudi cards are designed to work together. “The story is about the efficiency of the micro-architecture that lets you train for less, and the scalability of Gaudi because the components are more strongly integrated compared to the existing architecture,” said Medina.
Intel’s delivery of a system capable of delivering computational AI was one of the things technology analyst Patrick Moorhead was watching closely. “I think this is a very good sign,” he said. Barron’s. “It doesn’t mean that Intel is clear, what it does mean is it’s a great start.”
Moorhead says beyond proving that it can develop products for new kinds of computing needs like AI, Intel must also solve its manufacturing problems and deliver a powerful GPU. Intel’s manufacturing problems for years have caused investors to question the company’s prospects.
The AWS-Intel partnership is not expected to generate much revenue in 2021, KeyBanc Capital Markets analyst Weston Twigg wrote in a note to clients after the announcement. The devices are a signal to investors that Intel is able to win business in emerging areas of IT based on common building blocks and software. Twigg wrote that Gaudi accelerators would likely run on Intel Xeon processors and use other Intel technologies. His team predicts that the supply will be in high demand because of the price.
AI deep learning is a form of computing that teaches algorithms and various software to perform and improve tasks such as machine translation and speech recognition of virtual assistants created by people like
Apple
(AAPL) and
Alphabet
(GOOGL).
Investors reacted positively to the news of the Intel-AWS partnership, pushing shares up 2.5% on Tuesday. Intel stock took a beating in 2020, dropping 17% as the PHLX Semiconductor index rose 47%. Shares closed Wednesday’s regular session up 0.7% to $ 49.90.
Write to Max A. Cherney at [email protected]
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