Internet Service Giants Compete To Develop Autonomous Chips To Reduce Dependence On Intel

According to Taiwan media, industry sources say global network service giants including Google, Microsoft, Facebook (Facebook), Amazon and Alibaba have carried out independent development of chipset solutions. This is part of the efforts of these companies to enter the terminal hardware field, and also to reduce the dependence of processor chips on Intel.

Among these network service companies, the most active is Google, and its self developed chip TPU (Tensor Processing Units) has developed to the second generation. Compared with the available GPU in the market, Google's chip can reduce the training time of machine learning by half.

As mobile chip manufacturer Qualcomm intends to abandon its server sector in May this year to focus its resources on mobile chip business, the industry believes that the pace of Microsoft's independent development chips will be accelerated because Microsoft is reported to have been in the network from the high Qualcomm server.

Microsoft said earlier that its second generation MR (Mixed Reality) helmet HoloLens would use the company's independent AI chip HPU (Holographic Processing Unit) to handle data collected by sensors installed on the device, including depth sensing, head tracking, and inertial measurement. The HPU chip will also be used in Microsoft's other hardware devices, and also authorize other suppliers to use them on their terminal devices.

Industry sources say that the diversification of AI applications requires support from different chip solutions. In addition, Intel's long-term dominance of the development and supply of processor chips has prompted the web service giants to develop their own chips to disperse the risk of overdependence on Intel chips. Facebook, Amazon and Alibaba will soon start independent development of chips.

It is expected that in the field of many terminal equipment processors, Intel's future performance will be cast black clouds. The source said that Intel's 10 nano manufacturing process Ice Lake processor platform will be postponed from the planned 2019, and Intel is facing a severe challenge from the Rome and Milan processors from AMD. AMD's two chips are produced by TSMC's 7 nanometer manufacturing process.