Intel is developing a new processor type

• Intel’s new VPU seems to boost interference workloads across client devices.
• Intel bought Movidius, an AI acceleration firm, in 2016.
• Intel has announced a new CPU type.

Intel has revealed details of a new sort of processor that will soon be available in the company’s portfolio: the versatile processing unit, or VPU.

Intel’s written papers and a new Linux driver reveal the existence of the AI-acceleration CPU.

The VPU will be included in Intel’s 14th Gen Core CPUs (also called Meteor Lake) and will boost “computer vision and deep learning applications” It’s presumably the idea of Movidius, an AI acceleration firm Intel bought in 2016.

Intel must prove its AI skills in the face of competition from Nvidia.

AI workloads are training and inference. The former involves using vast datasets to construct AI applications with specialized skills, while the latter involves putting fresh data into these systems to get a result.

Training is compute-intensive and time-consuming due to the quantity of data involved. Inference must be completed extremely instantly, hence the compute requirements vary.

Intel’s new VPU seems to boost interference workloads across client devices. It’s unclear whether the company’s server CPUs will benefit from comparable technologies.

The new VPU won’t be released until Meteor Lake in late 2023, but its presence reveals Intel’s bigger goal.

Some of the world’s top corporations (including Apple) have found that bespoke silicon tailored for in-house settings may boost performance over general-purpose Intel or AMD CPUs. Chipmakers must find a method to stay competitive.

One possibility is to add specialty SKUs with extra accelerators and co-processors to increase performance.

Also Read

Will Team Blue abandon Intel Arc graphics cards?

This story comes from YouTuber Moore's Law. Moore's Law Dies Arc Alchemist...