The great race to power machine learning

Since the birth of the modern era of computing there has been an arms race between CPU microprocessor manufacturers that has pushed computer capabilities even higher, characterised by Moore's Law. This era's computer technology can be characterised as running sophisticated but essentially dumb applications. A new era is beginning that will drive microprocessor manufacturers to support intelligent applications, such as those based on newly emerged deep learning and other machine learning algorithms. Deep learning is the umbrella term for a set of techniques for architecting and training neural networks that in recent years has made huge leaps forward in accuracy. For example, deep learning neural networks are at the root of the most successful technologies for natural language understanding, image recognition, advanced game playing (such as Go), and others.