Intel VP talks AI strategy as company takes on Nvidia

Intel is on an artificial intelligence (AI) mission that it considers very, very possible.

The company is the world’s largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is best known for its CPU market dominance, with its familiar “Intel inside” campaign — reminding us all what resided inside our personal computers. However, in an age when AI chips are all the rage, the company finds itself chasing competitors, most notably Nvidia, which has a massive head start in AI processing with its GPUs.

There are significant benefits to catching up in this space. According to a report, the AI chip market was worth around $8 billion in 2020, but is expected to grow to nearly $200 billion by 2030.

At Intel’s Vision event in May, the company’s new CEO, Pat Gelsinger, highlighted AI as central to the company’s future products, while predicting that AI’s need for higher performance levels of compute makes it a key driver for Intel’s overall strategy.

Gelsinger said he envisioned four superpowers that spur innovation at Intel: Pervasive connectivity, ubiquitous compute, AI and cloud-to-edge infrastructure.

That requires high-performance hardware-plus-software systems, including in tools and frameworks used to implement end-to-end AI and data pipelines. As a result, Intel’s strategy is “to build a stable of chips and open-source software that covers a broad range of computing needs as AI becomes more prevalent,” a recent Wall Street Journal article noted.

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