Intel's MESO transistor promises vast leap in AI processing power

Less than a decade ago, neuroscientist Amir Khosrowshahi was drilling holes and sticking needles into skulls to learn about the human brain. He turned his knowledge of neuroscience into entrepreneurial success, cofounding Nervana, a startup that helped large companies run neural networks, the technology now driving explosive results in AI. Intel, the world's largest maker of computer chips, acquired Nervana for more than $350 million just two years later, in 2016. Since then, Harvard and UC Berkeley-trained Khosrowshahi has emerged as a key AI thinker within Intel, where AI and chips are colliding in new and profound ways. In an interview with VentureBeat, Khosrowshahi, now CTO of AI, said he is staying at Intel because of a group of researchers there. This team is building a new kind of integrated circuit (IC), filled with transistors that could one day operate at minuscule amounts of energy -- as low as 100 millivolts.