Apple is working on a processor devoted specifically to AI-related tasks, according to a person familiar with the matter. The chip, known internally as the Apple Neural Engine, would improve the way the company's devices handle tasks that would otherwise require human intelligence -- such as facial recognition and speech recognition, said the person, who requested anonymity discussing a product that hasn't been made public. Apple declined to comment.
[...] Apple devices currently handle complex artificial intelligence processes with two different chips: the main processor and the graphics chip. The new chip would let Apple offload those tasks onto a dedicated module designed specifically for demanding artificial intelligence processing, allowing Apple to improve battery performance.
Should Apple bring the chip out of testing and development, it would follow other semiconductor makers that have already introduced dedicated AI chips. Qualcomm Inc.'s latest Snapdragon chip for smartphones has a module for handling artificial intelligence tasks, while Google announced its first chip, called the Tensor Processing Unit (TPU), in 2016.
Google will supposedly put mini TPUs into smartphones in the coming years.
Previously:
Google's New TPUs are Now Much Faster -- will be Made Available to Researchers
Related Stories
Google's machine learning oriented chips have gotten an upgrade:
At Google I/O 2017, Google announced its next-generation machine learning chip, called the "Cloud TPU." The new TPU no longer does only inference--now it can also train neural networks.
[...] In last month's paper, Google hinted that a next-generation TPU could be significantly faster if certain modifications were made. The Cloud TPU seems to have have received some of those improvements. It's now much faster, and it can also do floating-point computation, which means it's suitable for training neural networks, too.
According to Google, the chip can achieve 180 teraflops of floating-point performance, which is six times more than Nvidia's latest Tesla V100 accelerator for FP16 half-precision computation. Even when compared against Nvidia's "Tensor Core" performance, the Cloud TPU is still 50% faster.
[...] Google will also donate access to 1,000 Cloud TPUs to top researchers under the TensorFlow Research Cloud program to see what people do with them.
Previously: Google Reveals Homegrown "TPU" For Machine Learning
Google Pulls Back the Covers on Its First Machine Learning Chip
Nvidia Compares Google's TPUs to the Tesla P40
NVIDIA's Volta Architecture Unveiled: GV100 and Tesla V100
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday May 28 2017, @02:26PM
So are there TPUs available as standalone chips at online shops for a decent price?
"Sorry David, Now is the time for the daily Facebook required rectal exam.."
(Score: 2, Insightful) by butthurt on Sunday May 28 2017, @02:30PM (7 children)
Another way to improve battery performance would be the mainframe model: do much of the computation at a central location, with the handset performing mainly input and output. A TRS-80 Model 100 might be able to handle it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kaszz on Sunday May 28 2017, @02:31PM (3 children)
It would be a smart move but would currently just give more undue power to the megamonoliths. Not a good idea as of now.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Sunday May 28 2017, @02:36PM (2 children)
Certainly not a good idea for privacy or security either. Apple especially does not have a great history with that. Google's is pretty good, but I think they have enough of my information already. I'm actually surprised how well Microsoft has done at not getting completely exploited at either XBox or out look online based on their general security history.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Sunday May 28 2017, @03:20PM (1 child)
"Google's is pretty good, but I think they have enough of my information already."
I wonder about that from time to time. Despite my precautions, it is safe to say that Google knows more about me than all the rest of the nosy bastards combined. There are ways to limit Google's data gathering, to some extent. Even so, you aren't going to stop them. In fairness, though, Google doesn't slap me around with adverts, it doesn't seem to lead me to irrelevant pages, or any other crazy stuff. Doing a search for "need a place to hide a body quick" doesn't result in the police kicking my door down. I can search periodically for any new broadband offers in my area, and I'm not flooded with dozens of different forms of advertisements.
I still have a distaste for, and a little fear of Google. Just because they have behaved rather well until now, doesn't mean they won't be evil SOB's a year from now, or ten years from now, or whenever.
Worse - what if they decide that I AM the evil SOB? I have my attitudes and opinions about women's rights, gay rights, race relations, religion, etc. What if Google decides that I'M THE EVIL BASTARD?!?!?!
FUCK!! ARISTARCHUS MAY BE A SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT AT GOOGLE!! I'M SCREWED!!!
Oh well, fuck you anyway Aristarchus. Do your worst, LMAO!
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday May 29 2017, @04:31AM
I tried your search [nypost.com].
Kuro5hin had a HOWTO called Corpse Disposal Made Simple, but then the hosting company decommissioned Kuro5hin's enter data center.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 28 2017, @03:09PM (1 child)
Don't apps like Siri already do that? It's a privacy and security nightmare but anyone who cared about that wouldn't use an Apple or Google or Microsoft product as supplied anyway.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Sunday May 28 2017, @10:05PM
> Don't apps like Siri already do that?
That's what I'd heard, but this article seems to say otherwise:
> It's a privacy and security nightmare [...]
I agree, but it has advantages, another being that when the service gets a "forklift upgrade" all the users benefit from the upgrade right away.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Sunday May 28 2017, @05:27PM
That's what Google is doing with TPUs and Apple with GPUs and Xeons probably (Siri).
In addition to battery life, putting hardware-accelerated machine learning capabilities in the phone also cuts down on latency and could theoretically be better for your privacy (but let's face it, you're screwed with a smartphone).
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday May 28 2017, @03:07PM (1 child)
Your phone is no longer a tool for the spies to use, to spy on you. Now, the phone IS THE SPY!! It has it's own brain, learns all about you, and reports what it decides to report. If you talk to it nicely, it may decide it likes you better than the spy masters. Whether that be so, or not, the AI can probably condense all the spying into rather short reports, and avoid sending gigs of data on you. It sits there, watching and listening to everything you do, and decides just what sort of victim you are, and sets you up to buy whatever bit of junk it thinks you'll like. The guys who sit on the other side of the world, trying to decide what all your numbers mean, and trying to work up adverts to induce you into purchasing THEIR junk will be out of work.
Isn't automation wonderful?
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Sunday May 28 2017, @10:07PM
―Philip K. Dick
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Sunday May 28 2017, @03:25PM
And then the iPhones will go all KILL ALL HUMANS on everyone. Hey, there's an app for that!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 28 2017, @03:37PM (1 child)
I tried my friends the other day and found out the iPhone doesn't even have mouse support yet, maybe they should work on that instead of this AI stuff?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday May 28 2017, @05:29PM
So it doesn't work with a Bluetooth mouse, eh? That's amusing.
They are more interested in "force touch" or whatever they are calling it.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]