Intel to Acquire Deep Learning Nervana

Nervana neural chip part of the deal

By R. Colin Johnson,EEtimes,LAKE WALES, Fla., Aug. 10, 2016 – 

Intel will announce its intention to acquire Nervana Systems at its Intel Developer Forum next week (IDF 2016, San Francisco, Calif., August 16-to-18)-a bid to obsolete the graphics processor unit (GPU) for deep learning artificial intelligence (AI) applications.

Intel dominates the high-performance computing (HPC) market, but Nvidia has made significant inroads into deep learning verticals with its sophisticated GPUs. However, Nervana Systems (Palo Alto, Calif.) has already made a significant dent in Nvidia's Cuda software for its GPUs with Nervana's Neon cloud service that is Cuda-compatible. Intel, however, is acquiring Nervana for its promised deep-learning accelerator chip, which it promises by 2017. If the chip plays out as advertised, Intel will sell Deep Learning accelerator hardware boards that beat Nvidia's GPU boards, while its newly acquired Neon cloud service will outperform Nvidia's Cuda software.

"This is not a slam dunk by Intel over Nvidia," Karl Freund, senior analyst for Deep Learning and HPC at Moor Insights & Strategy (Austin, Texas) told EE Times. "But it makes a lot of sense in a market that is growing very very fast. Graphics processing units (GPUs) are the prominent way to train deep-learning neural networks and Nvidia is the leader. Intel has its multi-core Xeons and Xeon Phi's and with the acquisition of Altera, its FPGAs, but it doesn't have GPUs. Acquiring Nervana is a way of getting into the deep-learning market not by copying the general-purpose GPU strategy, but by offering a specialized coprocessor specifically designed for neural networks." Click here to read more...