Analog Chips Find a New Lease of Life in Artificial Intelligence

The need for speed is a hot topic among participants at this week's AI Hardware Summit – larger AI language models, faster chips and more bandwidth for AI machines to make accurate predictions. But some hardware startups are taking a throwback approach for AI computing to counter the more-is-better approach. Companies including Innatera, Rain Neuromorphics and others are creating silicon brains with analog circuitry to mimic brain functionality. The brain is inherently analog, taking in raw sensory data, and these chipmakers are trying to recreate the way the brain's neurons and synapses work in traditional analog circuitry. Analog chips can be very good low-power sensing devices, especially for some sound and vision applications, said Kevin Krewell, an analyst at Tirias Research.