It is said that Intel will stop the nervana chip manufactured by TSMC at 16nm

Investment in artificial intelligence , Intel has always attached great importance to . As early as 2016 year , Intel is close 4 A high price of US $100 million bought a company that was only established for about two years AI Chip company Nervana. And then Nervana Also launched a number of AI chip . however , According to the latest news ,Nervana Of AI chip Nervana NNP-T The series may be abandoned .

According to Forbes , Intel will cut down Nervana Of AI chip , Mainly among them Nervana NNP-T series . As for why we should stop Nervana NNP-T series AI chip , Some analysts believe that , Intel through the latest acquisition , Already have Habana High performance of the company AI Training chip , meanwhile Nervana NNP-T The high cost of 、 TSMC OEM also has a certain relationship . because , Intel is unlikely to hand over its important products to others .

2019 year 12 In the middle of the month 20 US $100 million for Israel AI Chip startups Habana.Habana The company's first processor Goya(AI Reasoning ) Has been sold to global customers ,2019 year 6 Month launched Gaudi AI Training processor solutions are what Intel needs .

In acquisition Habana Before , Intel is already the most comprehensive AI Chip company , Flag AI The solution is CPU、FPGA、Nervana And in research GPU etc. , But so much AI Chip will distract energy and is not conducive to centralized promotion , Stop part AI Chip is also a natural thing .

The data shows ,Nervana The company is Intel in 2016 Annual cost 4 Acquired by US $100 million .Nervana The architecture design of neural network chip is very distinctive , in the light of AI The feature of requiring high-performance memory abandons the standard cache system , Use software to manage the memory system . Intel is acquiring Nervana And then there are a number of Nervana AI chip , The latest is mainly Nervana NNP-T And Nervana NNP-I These two paragraphs .

Nervana NNP-T series AI Chip in 2019 year 8 Launched in January , Code name Spring Crest, Main orientation AI Training , For standard NVIDIA Of Tesla series GPU To speed up the chip . Use TSMC 16nm Process production , The core area reaches 680mm2, Integrate 270 Billion transistors , collocation 32GB HBM2 memory , frequency 1.1GHz, Thermal design power consumption 150-250W.

Nervana NNP-I series AI Chip code Spring Hill, Main orientation AI Application of reasoning , The core scale is smaller /CPU Part of it is Intel Of 10nm process Ice Lake The core , Power consumption is 10-50W Between , Yes M.2 And PCIe Two specifications , Much smaller and more flexible .

edit ： Smart core - Woods