AI Chip Startup Puts Inference Cards on the Table

In the deep learning inferencing game, there are plenty of chipmakers, large and small, developing custom-built ASICs aimed at this application set. But one obscure company appears to have beat them to the punch. Habana Labs, a fabless semiconductor startup, began sampling its purpose-built inference processor for select customers back in September 2018, coinciding with the company's emergence from stealth mode. Eitan Medina, Habana's Chief Business Officer, claims its HL-1000 chip is now "the industry's highest performance inference processor." It's being offered to customers in a PCIe card that goes by name of Goya.