This article puts to bed any concerns that Intel is a commercial rival to Brainchip AKIDA technology any day soon:
"ApplicationsAccording to Intel, this kind of performance surpasses the most powerful GPUs built by rival chipmakers, paving the way for significant breakthroughs in areas such as real-time continuous learning for scientific and engineering problem-solving AI applications. Other potential use cases include running complex logistics systems, smart city infrastructure management and large language model training, Intel said.To get the ball rolling, Intel and Sandia National Laboratories will use Hala Point to tackle optimization problems that can be solved by searching for, planning and following the shortest path in a map. “That’s where we have achieved the best results,” Davies said. “In that domain, we have the most compelling results, with speedups of as much as 50 times, and 100-times savings in energy.” Constellation Research Inc. analyst Holger Mueller said Intel’s neuromorphic computing architecture appears to be a genuine alternative to Nvidia’s GPUs, which currently dominate the AI processing industry but come at an excessive cost.“It was inevitable that someone would come up with an alternative to challenge GPUs eventually as the opportunity with AI is just too big to miss,” Mueller said. “The competition is good for enterprises and helps to foster innovation, so it will be interesting to see how Nvidia responds. In the meantime, it’s nice to see the long-ailing Intel at the forefront of neuromorphic computing’s development.
The Loihi 2 system looks extremely promising, but it’s not yet close to commercialization, so it will be a while before we can see if it will truly rival Nvidia.” Davies said neuromorphic computing can potentially deliver similar advances to what quantum computers are expected to deliver – when they become available. “The difference is that quantum is much further out,” Davies said, so neuromorphic computers could be good for drug discovery and similar problems down the road.Sandia National Laboratories will initially use Hala Point for advanced brain-scale computing research, with a focus on solving scientific computing problems in areas such as computer architecture, computer science, device physics and informatics.
Intel stressed that Hala Point is still a research prototype designed to advance the capabilities of future commercial systems, and it anticipates that the system will achieve practical breakthroughs that can significantly reduce the burden of modern AI workloads."
With reporting by Robert Hof
https://siliconangle.com/2024/04/17/intel-unveils-powerful-brain-inspired-neuromorphic-chip-system-energy-efficient-ai-workloads/
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