What's New: At Hot Chips 2019, Intel revealed new details of upcoming high-performance artificial intelligence (AI) accelerators: Intel Nervana neural network processors, with the NNP-T for training and the NNP-I for inference. Intel engineers also presented technical details on hybrid chip packaging technology, Intel Optane DC persistent memory and chiplet technology for optical I/O. "To get to a future state of'AI everywhere,' we'll need to address the crush of data being generated and ensure enterprises are empowered to make efficient use of their data, processing it where it's collected when it makes sense and making smarter use of their upstream resources. Data centers and the cloud need to have access to performant and scalable general purpose computing and specialized acceleration for complex AI applications. In this future vision of AI everywhere, a holistic approach is needed--from hardware to software to applications."

Though machine learning has been around for more than three decades, it took a lot of time for the hardware to catch up with the demands of these power-hungry algorithms. With each passing year, the chip-set manufacturers have tried to make the hardware lighter and faster. Today, over 100 companies are working on building next-generation chips and hardware architectures that would match the capabilities of algorithms. These chips are capable of enabling deep learning applications on smartphones and other edge computing devices. Intel recently revealed new details of upcoming high-performance artificial intelligence accelerators: Intel Nervana neural network processors.

COMPUTER BRAINS are tiny rectangles, becoming tinier with each new generation. Or so it used to be. These days Andrew Feldman, the boss of Cerebras, a startup, pulls a block of Plexiglas out of his backpack. Baked into it is a microprocessor the size of letter paper. "It's the world's biggest," he says proudly, rattling off its technical specs: 400,000 cores (sub-brains), 18 gigabytes of memory and 1.2trn transistors.

Nvidia's Tegra chips started off powering mobile phones, but they are now used in cars, servers, robots, and drones. The next Tegra chip being detailed at Hot Chips is already in Nvidia's Drive PX 2, which the company described as a "supercomputer for cars." Sitting in the trunk of a car, Drive PX 2 helps self-driving cars with object recognition, navigation, and other functions. This megachip has a powerful graphics processor, and we can't wait to hear more about it.