SKT Unveils its AI Chip and New Plans for AI Semiconductor Business

SK Telecom (SKT) today unveiled its self-developed artificial intelligence (AI) chip named'SAPEON X220' and shared its AI semiconductor business vision. SAPEON X220 is optimally designed to process artificial intelligence tasks faster, using less power by efficiently processing large amounts of data in parallel. Its deep learning computation speed is 6.7 kilo-frames per second, which is 1.5 times faster than that of Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) for inference that are being widely used by AI-service companies. At the same time, it uses 20% less power than GPU by consuming 60 watts of energy and is about half the price of a GPU. SKT explained that SAPEON X220 will enable the provision of high-quality AI services by enhancing the performance of AI data centers through speedy computation of massive amounts of data.