The war in the field of artificial intelligence chip is more and more fierce, in addition to the technical level of the breakthrough, but also fight who can seize more applications.
For the first time in two years, the first-generation AI vision chip on the horizon of artificial intelligence start-ups was released on December 20, and will first face three scenarios: smart driving, smart city and smart business. Horizon founder Yu Kai told First Financial News reporter, Next year will be in the field of smart home more commercial landing.
In the field of AI chips, in recent years, with the rise of Horizons, Deep Science, Technology, Cambrian and other companies, it will change the situation that China spends a huge sum of foreign exchange chips imported annually.
Combination of hard and soft routes
Horizon released two chips, one named journey (Journey) 1.0, for smart driving, the other named Sunrise (Sunrise) 1.0, the main smart camera. Both chips are used in the first of the horizon Generation BPU architecture - Gaussian architecture.
Horizon introduced the journey to simultaneously detect and identify pedestrian, motor vehicle, non-motorized vehicle, lane lines, traffic signs, traffic lights, etc. Rising Sun can conduct large-scale face detection tracking at the front end , Video structure and other applications.
Yu Kai, head of Baidu was one of deep learning Institute, he has been engaged in all aspects of the software work. However, in 2015 founded the horizon, the team has chosen to go the Flex route, namely 'algorithm + chip' business model, which is a relatively 'heavy' route. it is both a cross-border team, but also requires a lot of funds to support the long period of research and development.
'Artificial intelligence to society in various scenes floor, application, only software is not enough.' Yu Kai said at the press conference on the 20th of his view, the direction of cutting-edge hardware and software combination is now more and more attention.
Everyone knows that AlphaGO has defeated Li Shishi, but we do not know how much we have to pay for it. The human brain is 20 watts, while AlphaGO uses 2,000 kilowatts of computer. , Which shows that the artificial intelligence to move forward, the hardware is certainly an obstacle. 'Tsinghua University Professor of Computer Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences Zhang cymbals also said at the scene.
Next: Application scenarios
From the application scene to drive the design of the hardware, the two leading two giants are currently NVIDIA and Intel.The former GPU (graphics processor) has a very wide range of applications in the field of AI, the latter in the AI chip industry chain has done a lot Acquisitions and investments, including about 100 million U.S. dollars invested in the horizon.
In addition, Google, Tesla, Apple, Qualcomm, Huawei and other industry giants are developing AI chips.US investment firm Morningstar has released a report mentioned the Alphabet (Google parent) TPU, that it may drive Amazon and Microsoft And other companies to introduce more customized chips, as Intel, NVIDIA and Xilinx in the AI chip market competitors.
These companies are trying to produce the product that best suits their needs to reduce reliance on traditional chip giants such as Tesla, which is based on Nvidia's graphics card GPU, with Autopilot's hardware-assisted drive system. However, , Their reliance on NVIDIA will also decrease.
Some AI field new unicorn is also full horsepower just last month, the Cambrian incubation CAS released a new generation of AI chips.Cambuzon said the scope of this chip covers the image recognition , Security surveillance, smart driving, drone, voice recognition, natural language processing and other applications.
Referred to the difference between competitors, Yu Kai said Horizon AI chip selection is a scene with a combination of depth mode, on the basis of which the company an important business model is 'turnkey programs' that provide hardware and software design together Customized solutions.
Google Cloud Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning chief scientist Li Feifei said earlier that artificial intelligence is undergoing historical moments, it has been out of the laboratory into the industrial application stage.
For the horizon, the first vertical area of application to be seized is autopilot, and they consider autopilot to represent 'Everest' core technology of artificial intelligence. "Horizon has partnered with Audi to develop platform-driven autopilot technology for the global market In addition, the company is also working with Intel to develop a new processor architecture for autonomous driving and a software system for vehicle-level (vehicle navigation specifications).
In addition, the horizon has also been in the field of smart home commercial attempts, including smart air conditioners, sweeping robots and other products.Yu Kai told First Financial said next year in the second generation of Bernoulli architecture next-generation processor journey launched, There will be more landing in the commercialization of smart home.