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Interface news, as for whether Intel will provide Gaudi2 chips to China again in the future, Intel spokesperson gave a positive reply in a recent media internal event: Under the premise of complying with regulatory requirements, we are working with Chinese customers, including cloud service providers and server OEMs, to provide compliant products, but this cooperation process is still ongoing. This is the first time that Intel has given a positive reply to the question of whether it will continue to provide AI acceleration chips to the Chinese market after the U.S. Department of Commerce upgraded its export control policy on October 17.
The Gaudi2 chip that was asked about is the AI chip product released by Intel in China this year. On July 11, Intel held a press conference in Beijing and announced the launch of Habana Gaudi2, a deep learning Xi processor in the Chinese market, which can be used to accelerate AI training and inference, and the 24 Ethernet ports integrated in the international version of the product have been reduced to 21. At the press conference, Intel mentioned that server OEMs including Inspur Information, H3C, and Super Fusion are expected to launch server products equipped with Gaudi2.
Intel has been silent for a long time about the impact of export controls. Previously, at the earnings conference on October 27, when asked about the impact of the new regulations, Intel CEO Gelsinger said that the export controls are mainly aimed at accelerators related to high-end AI training, and some of them affect Intel's business in China. However, in this internal media event, Gelsinger admitted to the media present that the Chinese market is very important, accounting for 27% of Intel's overall revenue, and it is a market that cannot be abandoned.
As the largest chip market, China has a huge consumer base and a fast-growing technology industry, which has become an important driving force for the global chip industry. The growth of demand in the Chinese market has boosted the investment and expansion of global chipmakers. At the same time, China is also increasing investment in scientific research in the field of chips to promote the improvement of independent R&D and innovation capabilities. However, China also faces challenges such as technology dependence and supply chain security in the chip sector. Therefore, China is accelerating the development of the local chip industry and strengthening international cooperation to narrow the technology gap and improve the ability of independent innovation.
——Chinese's artificial intelligent chip industry started late and developed rapidly
Chinese artificial intelligence chips started late, rapid development, mainly thanks to the strong support of policies and the combination of production, education and research model, in 2016 artificial intelligence Alpha Go defeated Go master Lee Sedol, AI chips supporting artificial intelligence computing power have attracted much attention, many artificial intelligence technology companies have emerged in China, including Zhongke Cambrian; In 2017, the artificial intelligence inference chip helped launch the world's first inference server equipped with Cambrian high-performance machine Xi processor chip; In 2018, China's AI chips accounted for 25.9% of the global market share, surpassing the United States for the first time; By 2022, China's AI chips will achieve a single-point breakthrough in performance, processing speed, and utilization.
At present, there is still a certain distance between mainland artificial intelligence chips and the international advanced level, and the achievements are only in some fields, and the entire industry is still in the embryonic stage of the life cycle, which requires more investment and efforts.
——Chinese artificial intelligent chips penetrate many industries
Artificial intelligence chips include the field of computer science and semiconductor chips; The field of computer science refers to efficient intelligent algorithms, i.e., software; The field of semiconductor chips refers to the effective implementation of algorithms on silicon wafers, and finally turns them into physical products that can be combined with supporting software. At present, artificial intelligence chips can be divided into CPU, GPU, FPGA, ASIC, and brain-like chips according to their technical architecture; According to their location in the network, they can be divided into cloud AI chips, edge AI chips, and terminal AI chips. According to its goals in practice, it can be divided into training chips and inference chips.
With its strong algorithm carrying capacity and ultra-high processing speed, artificial intelligence chips are widely used in a variety of scenarios, such as intelligent face recognition or intelligent voice recognition, server big data analysis for ultra-high databases, autonomous driving fields that process changing traffic information and various sensor information at any time, and intelligent robots.
——The scale of Chinese artificial intelligent chip market is increasing year by year
The artificial intelligence chip industry is the core of the information industry and the key force leading a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation. In recent years, with the rapid development of big data, cloud computing, Internet of Things, and autonomous driving, the market demand has expanded year by year, according to the data disclosed by CCID, in 2021, the market size of artificial intelligence chips in mainland China will reach 31.06 billion yuan; The preliminary forecast is that in 2022, the mainland artificial intelligence chip market will reach 46.59 billion yuan.
Driven by the wave of AI large models, the market size of AI chips, servers, and data centers will increase significantly. IDC predicts that Chinese intelligent chip shipments will reach 1.335 million pieces in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 22.5%. Industry insiders said that it has become a consensus to build heterogeneous computing power, establish an open ecosystem, and break through the bottleneck of high-performance computing power. At present, many large-scale model companies are willing and take the initiative to adapt to domestic chips, and domestic chips will usher in new development opportunities.
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