AI ISN’T JUST changing internet services, cars, robotics, and healthcare. It’s changing the computer chip market too.
This shift was underlined on Monday when Intel said it would pay $15.3 billion to acquire Mobileye, an Israeli company that makes chips and cameras for cars and trucks, including the self-driving variety. The purchase will be Intel’s second largest ever, following its $16.7 billion billion acquisition of chip-maker Altera in 2015. The Altera buy was also driven, in part, by the recent rise of machine learning, where machine learn can discrete tasks on their own.
These are enormous acquisitions in many respects. After acquiring Mobileye, Intel will move its autonomous driving team to the Mobileye’s headquarters, not vice versa. In other words, Intel is letting Mobileye take over a growing wing of its company. The world’s largest chip maker knows the market is changing rapidly, and it’s determined to change with it.
But increasingly, specialized AI chips are also needed in devices, including cars. Think of it this way: companies need chips in the data center to train the neural networks, and as these machine learning models get more complex, they will also need chips in the devices to help execute the models. Once a company teaches a system to recognize detailed images, for instance, it will need a way of running a system on a phone or a car.
Seems that if you were to look at buying out an AI chip maker, it could cost ~15 billion. This is for a specialised chip, not a general AI chip like SNAP.
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