Reports have it that Intel Corp is now working with Facebook Inc. to complete a new artificial intelligence chip in the second half of this year, says Intel at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
As reported by Reuters, the chips are Intel’s strategy to retain its hold on a fast-growing sector of the artificial intelligence computing market. However, this doesn’t mean it will not face competition from other chips makers like Nvidia Corp and Amazon Inc.
The new chip will help with inference (according to researchers) which is the process of taking an artificial intelligence algorithm and putting it to use, e.g. by tagging friends in photos automatically.
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At the moment, Intel’s processors take the lion share in the machine learning inference market, which experts at Morningstar think will be worth $11.8 billion by 2021. Nvidia launched its own inference chip to compete with Intel in September.
Amazon also announced the creation of an inference chip in November. Although, it is not a direct threat to Intel and Nvidia’s chip business because Amazon is not selling its chips. Amazon will sell its services to cloud customers that run atop the chips in 2020. It could deny both Nvidia and Intel of a major customer if Amazon depends on its own chips.
Intel further announced that Dell Technologies Inc will feature Intel’s next generation of processors in its XPS line of laptops.