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takyon writes:

Intel will release a machine learning chip intended to compete with Nvidia's Tesla chips and Google's TPUs (Tensor Processing Units):

When the AI boom came a-knocking, Intel wasn't around to answer the call. Now, the company is attempting to reassert its authority in the silicon business by unveiling a new family of chips designed especially for artificial intelligence: the Intel Nervana Neural Network Processor family, or NNP for short.

The NNP family is meant as a response to the needs of machine learning, and is destined for the data center, not your PC. Intel's CPUs may still be a stalwart of server stacks (by some estimates, it has a 96 percent market share in data centers), but the workloads of contemporary AI are much better served by the graphical processors or GPUs coming from firms like Nvidia and ARM. Consequently, demand for these companies' chips has skyrocketed. (Nvidia's revenue is up 56 percent year on year.) Google has got in on the action, designing its own silicon named the Tensor Processing Unit to power its cloud computing business, while new firms like the UK-based Graphcore are also rushing to fill the gap.

Also at Engadget, TechCrunch, and CNET.

Previously: Nervana Deep Learning Chip

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