Intel Bets Big on Deep Learning: Lays Out Artificial Intelligence Roadmap

A few short months ago, Intel acquired Nervana Systems for 400 million dollars with the intention of using the technology they developed in order to be competitive in the deep learning market currently dominated by GPU-based solutions from NVIDIA. Artificial Intelligence is a big market for Intel and the company sees it as a pivotal ground that they must put a stake in or risk falling behind like they did on the mobile front. With Nervana's technology, Intel is expecting to produce "a breakthrough 100-fold increase in performance in the next three years to train complex neural networks", says Intel CEO Bryan Krzanich in a recent editorial. Nervana's technology will be a PCIe add-in card expected to hit be out sometime around the first half of 2017, codenamed Lake Crest and incorporates HBM technology that is directly targeting current GPU solutions. Intel believes that GPGPU architecture is not uniquely advantageous for AI and that their approach can support much larger models and is much more highly scalable.