5 Startups Building Artificial Intelligence Chips - Nanalyze

The first thing we asked when we were turned on to this niche was, what's an artificial intelligence chip? It's best to first think about what artificial intelligence software requires which is a great deal of processing speed, then a great deal of power in order to feed that processing speed. However, it's not just speed and low power that matter, it's also the way the processor functions. This excerpt from MIT Technology review explains why we can't just use a high-end Intel processor chip for artificial intelligence: While a top-of-the-line Intel processor packs more than enough punch to run sprawling financial spreadsheets or corporate operations software, chips optimized for deep learning break particular types of problems--such as understanding voice commands or recognizing images--into millions of bite-size chunks. Because GPUs like Nvidia's consist of thousands of tiny processor cores crammed together on one slice of silicon, they can handle thousands of these chunks simultaneously.