Intel closes its artificial intelligence department

Itel closes one of its departments for the development of artificial intelligence hardware, which was acquired as from the external company Nervana in 2016 and was expected to be integrated within the firm. However, the development of neural network processors (NNP) is going to stop and the focus is going to focus on further development of the technologies developed by Habana Labs.

Intel closes its Artificial Intelligence department

In late 2019, the company purchased the Israeli company Habana Labs for $ 2 billion. In 2020, however, Nervana's first commercial products were expected to go on the market. The second generation of development should be used in current HPC systems. But even if the hardware were now available, it became clear that the breakthrough would not be possible.

Change of plans

Intel has also integrated its technology in the past two years and released several Nervana AI chips, the most recent being Nervana NNP-T and Nervana NNP-I. The first AI chip in the Nerva NNP-T series was released in August last year under the name Spring Crest. This chip was manufactured using TSMC's 16nm process and has a core area of ​​680mm2. It integrates 27 billion transistors and is equipped with 32GB of HBM2 memory.

While the Nervana NNP-I series AI chip is much smaller. Its code name is Spring Hill and it is primarily geared towards AI inference applications. The CPU part is the Ice Lake core of Intel's 10nm process. The power consumption is between 10 and 50 W. There is M.2 and the PCIe specifications are much smaller and more flexible.

Nothing specific is known about the reasons why this department of the firm is closed. Although the high cost of the Nervana NNP-I series could be the reason why Intel made this decision. The firm has not confirmed anything at the moment.

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