The firm’s ATOM chip is the most recent Korean try to problem international chief Nvidia Corp within the {hardware} that powers the doubtless revolutionary AI know-how.
AI is the discuss of the tech world, as ChatGPT – a chatbot from Microsoft-backed OpenAI that generates articles, essays, jokes and even poetry – has turn into the fastest-growing shopper app in historical past simply two months after launch, in keeping with UBS.
Nvidia, a U.S. chip designer, has a commanding share of high-end AI chips, making up about 86% of the computing energy of the world’s six greatest cloud providers as of December, in keeping with Jefferies chip analyst Mark Lipacis.
The South Korean authorities needs to foster a home trade, investing greater than $800 million over the following 5 years for analysis and improvement in a bid to raise the market share of Korean AI chips in home knowledge centres from basically zero to 80% by 2030.
“It’s hard to catch up to Nvidia, which is so far ahead in general-purpose AI chips,” mentioned Kim Yang-Paeng, senior researcher on the Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Trade. “But it’s not set in stone because AI chips can carry out different functions and there aren’t set boundaries or metrics.”
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Rebellions’ ATOM is designed to excel at operating pc imaginative and prescient and chatbot AI purposes. Because it targets particular duties reasonably than doing a variety, the chip consumes solely about 20% of the ability of an Nvidia A100 chip on these duties, mentioned Rebellions co-founder and chief govt Park Sunghyun. A100 is the most well-liked chip for AI workloads, highly effective sufficient to create – in trade lingo, “train” – the AI fashions. ATOM, designed by Rebellions and manufactured by Korean large Samsung Electronics Co, doesn’t do coaching.
While international locations comparable to Taiwan, China, France, Germany and the United States have intensive plans to assist their semiconductor firms, the South Korean authorities is uncommon in singling out AI chips for a concentrated push.
Seoul will put out a discover this month for 2 knowledge centres, referred to as neural processing unit farms, with solely home chipmakers allowed to bid, an official on the Ministry of Science and ICT instructed Reuters.
‘TWISTING ARMS’
In a rustic whose companies provide half the world’s reminiscence chips, the authorities wish to create a market that may be a take a look at mattress for AI chipmakers, aiming to foster international rivals.
“The government is twisting the arm of the data centres and telling them, ‘Hey, use these chips’,” Rebellions’ Park, a former Morgan Stanley engineer, instructed Reuters.
Without such assist, he mentioned, knowledge centres and their clients would seemingly follow Nvidia chips.
Sapeon Korea Inc additionally plans to take part within the challenge, the SK Telecom Co subsidiary mentioned.
FuriosaAI, backed by South Korea’s prime search engine Naver Corp and state-run Korea Development Bank, instructed Reuters it’s going to additionally bid.
“There’s a lot of momentum behind Nvidia’s developments. These startups have got to build momentum, so that will take time,” mentioned Alan Priestley, an analyst at IT analysis agency Gartner. “But government incentives such as what’s happening in Korea could well affect the market share within Korea.”
Rebellions will search to take part within the authorities challenge in a consortium with KT Corp, an enormous Korean telecom, cloud and knowledge centre operator, within the hopes of weaning Nvidia clients off the U.S. provider.
“Amid high dependence on foreign GPUs (graphics processing units) globally, the cooperation between KT and Rebellions will allow us to have an ‘AI full stack’ that encompasses software and hardware based on domestic technology,” mentioned KT vice chairman Bae Han-chul.
Rebellions declined to provide a forecast for its AI chip enterprise. It has raised 122 billion received ($96 million), together with 30 billion received from KT in a funding spherical joined by Singapore’s Temasek Pavilion Capital and 10 billion received grant from the South Korean authorities.
Source: economictimes.indiatimes.com