Artificial Intelligence Is Fueling an Arms Race Among Chip Makers
09 11월 2017 - 9:29PM
Dow Jones News
By Ted Greenwald
Chip makers are racing to develop artificial-intelligence
products to fuel growth as sales of personal computers and
smartphones cool.
Nvidia Corp., Intel Corp., Advanced Micro Designs Inc., and a
raft of startups are crafting new processors to tap into a broader
AI market that is growing 50% a year, according to International
Data Corp.
Growth has been elusive in some areas of the semiconductor
industry, contributing to a wave of consolidation capped this week
when networking specialist Broadcom Ltd. bid $105 billion for
smartphone-chip leader Qualcomm Inc. in what would the sector's
biggest-ever deal.
Global spending on AI-related hardware and software could expand
to $57.6 billion in 2021 from $12 billion this year, IDC estimates.
Of that, a sizeable portion will go into data centers, which by
2020 are expected to devote a quarter of capacity to AI-related
computations, IDC projects.
In recent years, certain AI techniques have become central to
the ability of, say, Amazon.com Inc.'s Echo smart-speaker to
understand spoken commands. They enable the Nest security camera
from Google parent Alphabet Inc. to distinguish familiar people
from strangers so it can send an alert. They also allow Facebook
Inc. to match social-media posts with ads most likely to interest
the person doing the posting.
The biggest internet companies -- Google and Facebook as well as
Amazon, International Business Machines Inc., Microsoft Corp., and
their Chinese counterparts -- are packing their data centers with
specialized hardware to accelerate the training of AI software to,
for instance, translate documents.
The online giants all are exploiting an AI approach known as
deep learning that allows software to find patterns in digital
files such as imagery, recordings and documents. It can take time
for such programs to discover meaningful patterns in training data.
Internet giants want to improve their algorithms without waiting
weeks to find out whether the training panned out.
The chip makers are vying to help them do it faster.
Much of Nvidia's 24-year history was spent making high-end
graphics chips for personal computers. Lately, its wares have
proven faster than conventional processors in training AI
software.
Nvidia, which reports third-quarter earnings Thursday, has seen
its sales to data centers nearly triple in the past 12 months to
roughly $1.4 billion, largely driving a nearly sevenfold increase
in the company's stock price to $212.03 over the past two
years.
The optimism around Nvidia "is what everyone in the space has
been experiencing," said Mike Henry, chief executive of AI-chip
startup Mythic Inc. He said an "explosion of interest" has yielded
$15 million in investments in Mythic from venture outfits including
prominent Silicon Valley firm DFJ.
Private investors have nearly doubled their total stake in AI
hardware to $252 billion this year, according to PitchBook Data
Inc.
Nvidia's chief rivals aren't standing still. Last year, Intel
bought Nervana Systems for an undisclosed sum. The chip giant is
working with Facebook and others to deliver Nervana-based chips,
intended to outdo Nvidia for AI calculations, by the end of the
year.
Beyond Nervana, Intel is prioritizing AI performance throughout
its data-center product line. Revenue in the divisions responsible
for server processors and programmable chips were up 7% and 10%,
respectively, from the prior year, Intel said in its third-quarter
earnings report last month.
"We don't disclose our total investments in these things, but
it's a large effort" on par with its work to lead the way in
conventional processing, said Naveen Rao, who leads Intel's AI
group.
Advanced Micro Designs, which competes with Nvidia for graphics
in gaming systems, recently shipped its own AI-focused graphics
processor line called Radeon Instinct. Baidu Inc. is a customer,
and AMD said in its most-recent earnings call that other cloud
providers are as well.
Some companies aren't waiting for the big chip vendors. Google
has designed its own AI accelerators, seeking an advantage by
tailoring silicon specifically for its software.
"This field is only getting started," said Ian Buck, Nvidia's
head of accelerated computing, "and it's being invented and
reinvented, it feels like, every quarter."
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 09, 2017 07:14 ET (12:14 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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