AI Sparks Hyper-Competition

Big data center operators say they are seeing a steady stream of new architectures for accelerating deep learning neural networks--and the flow is just getting started, according to comments at last week's AI Hardware Summit. One analyst pegged the number of established and startup companies designing AI accelerators at a whopping 130. "The machine-learning revolution has reopened the opportunity for new architectures…let a thousand flowers bloom," said Alphabet Chairman and former Stanford President John Hennessy in an opening keynote at the event. Such domain-specific chips don't have to be compatible with legacy object code so the industry "can introduce new architectures faster than in general-purpose computing," he added. Potential users from Alibaba, Facebook, Google, and Uber said the chip vendors need to show their benchmark scores, make their software easy to use, and conform to emerging standards. "We are sampling a few vendors' upcoming products, and one issue is using their software correctly…it takes a long time to vet hardware and a lot of time to bring new software into our ecosystem," said Linjie Xu [[CQ]], director of applied AI architecture at Alibaba Cloud, speaking on a panel.