Intel Corp. is planning a major reduction in headcount, likely numbering in the thousands, to cut costs and cope with a sputtering personal-computer market, according to people with knowledge of the situation. The layoffs will be announced as early as this month, with the company planning to make the move around the same time as its third-quarter earnings report on Oct. 27, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the deliberations are private. The chipmaker had 113,700 employees as of July. Some divisions, including Intel's sales and marketing group, could see cuts affecting about 20% of staff, according to the people. Intel is facing a steep decline in demand for PC processors, its main business, and has struggled to win back market share lost to rivals like Advanced Micro Devices Inc.

Intel, Dell and the American Association of Community Colleges launched the AI Incubator Network, which will build labs at 10 colleges around the U.S. Colleges can apply for $10,000 each to equip the physical lab and build artificial intelligence training programs. Applications are due Feb. 25. Michelle Johnston Holthaus, executive vice president and general manager at Intel, said in a press release that this specialized program is a starting point for the next generation of U.S. technologists, engineers and inventors. This latest workforce development project is part of Intel's AI for Workforce program that launched last year. Brian Gonzalez, executive director of government, partnerships and initiatives at Intel, said the new program makes AI accessible to novice learners.

In acquiring Vertex.AI for its Movidius unit, Intel is envisioning a tomorrow where deep learning will feature in many aspects of business. Chip giant Intel has acquired Vertex.AI, a Seattle start-up that is developing deep learning for every platform. The start-up will join the Movidius group, which is focused on self-learning and artificial intelligence (AI) technology on a myriad of devices. Intel acquired Movidius in 2016 for an undisclosed sum, rumoured to be in the region of $300m. This was part of a $1bn spending spree on AI tech companies, including Mighty AI, DataRobot, Lumiata, AEye and others.

Intel's hardware for accelerating AI computation is finally on its way to customers. The company announced today that its first-generation Neural Network Processor, code named "Lake Crest," will be rolling out to a small set of partners in the near future to help them drastically accelerate how much machine learning work they can do. The NNPs are designed to very quickly tackle the math that underpins artificial intelligence applications, specifically neural networks, a currently popular branch of machine learning. One of the big problems with the large, deep neural networks that are popular right now is that they can be very computationally intensive, which makes them harder to test and deploy rapidly. At first, the NNPs will only get released to a small number of intel partners who the company plans to begin outfitting before the end of this year.

Intel isn't wasting any time now that it officially owns Mobileye. The Mobileye team has unveiled plans to build a fleet of 100 or more self-driving vehicles to conduct tests in both its native Israel as well as the US and Europe. They'll meld Mobileye's sensor, mapping and driving technology with Intel's computing platforms, data center tech and 5G wireless to make Level 4 autonomous cars (they can do all the driving themselves but may ask for intervention) that talk to the cloud. They won't be tied to any one brand -- sorry, BMW. As Intel explains, it's as much about selling the concept as actual experimentation.

From PCs to servers, Intel is trying to redesign the way computers operate. We've already seen how PCs are changing, with 2-in-1 hybrids and tiny Compute Sticks, but some of the chip maker's groundbreaking technologies will initially appear in servers. The PC market is in decline, and the chipmaker has cut unprofitable products like smartphone chips. Intel is redirecting more resources to develop server and data-center products, which are already money makers for the company. Intel is also focusing on markets like the Internet of Things, memory, silicon photonics, and FPGAs (field programmable gate arrays), all of which have ties to the fast-growing data center business.

Sixteen years ago, a small low-power chip startup called Transmeta forced Intel to retool its desktop PC processors to meet the demands of notebooks. Today, Intel is adapting its PC processors to an entirely new market: self-driving cars. Intel has joined forces with Mobileye--the former brains behind Tesla Motors' autopilot system--and auto parts maker Delphi, according to several reports. Specifically, Intel plans to put a Core i7 inside self-driving cars as the primary controller, apparently, in conjunction with the Mobileye EyeQ chips, according to The New York Times. Later Intel will use a "more powerful and unnamed processor to be unveiled in a few weeks"--presumably at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January.