Intel merges AI operations into a new unit

Intel's artificial intelligence efforts have been scattered over many different units but are now being united into a single operating group. The Artificial Intelligence Products Group will focus on the development of chips and software products tied to machine learning, algorithms, and deep learning. The new group could become Intel's single most important group as companies implement machine learning into operations. Intel is tweaking more chips and developing software to take on workloads like analytics, image recognition, and automation. Intel is designing a new Xeon Phi chip code-named Knights Mill that will focus on machine learning. Additionally, it is applying its wide portfolio of FPGAs (field programmable gate arrays) to artificial intelligence.