AI processor emerging as new opportunity for China, say…

Artificial intelligence (AI) processors will constitute a new opportunity for development in China, as AI applications are emerging rapidly to trigger a new round of demand in AI processors, according to Yu Kai, founder and CEO of China-based Horizon Robotics.

Yu made the statement when delivering a keynote speech at the China Artificial Intelligence Summit (CAIS) 2017 held recently in Nanjing, China.

Yu said his company has set up an AI research and development center in Nanjing, focusing on developing embedded AI solutions for smart driving, smart living and smart cities.

Since the China government released a plan to promote new-generation AI development in early July 2017, all related sectors in the country have been gearing up for the development of AI technologies and applications, Yu said. He cited three major trends rising in the AI development as a major force to drive the development of AI processors in China.

The first trend is the emerging of a new Moore’s Law. After having driven the development of the global information technology over the past 40-50 years, Yu said, the Moore’s Law is entering a new stage, featuring a gradual swift of logical computing to smart computing, with dedicated AI processors needed to handle smart computing and constituting a new business field which China firms can tap into.

The second trend is the movement of computing from the center to the edge. Computing in the PC era was done locally, then massive computing was channeled through browsers and done in the cloud, and now cloud computing is moving slowly to terminal computing along with the Internet progressing to mobile network and then to Internet of Everything (IoE). In the AI era, massive computing needs mainly come from the terminal side, but cloud computing could hardly satisfy the requirements for real-time and low latency computing as well as better user experience by the terminal side.

The third trend is that edge computing technology is emerging to facilitate much faster, higher-volume AI computing. In this regard, China boasts a great opportunity for developing embedded AI processors and algorithms, which can be applied to grant intelligence to terminal sensors and lenses used in self-driving cars and smart cities.

Horizon Robotics is developing an embedded AI processor that features an extremely low power consumption of only 2W and is two to three times faster than its best counterpart available now in computing performance, yet at a cost of only one twentieth, according to Yu.

Yu Kai, CEO of Horizon Robotics.
Photo: Jean Chu, Digitimes, September 2017

Categories: Bits + chips IC design, distribution IT + CE IT components, peripherals Server, IPC, cloud computing Software

Tags: 2017 AI artificial intelligence China cloud computing EDGE embedded Internet processor

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