Intel is launcing the Meteor Lake with neural network to enable ML processing, and aims to build AI into every chip.
During the company’s Q2 2023 earnings call, CEO Pat Gelsinger repeatedly told investors that Intel is planning to “build AI into every product that [they] build.” Intel will be releasing its next generation of computer processors later this year and it will be the first computer chip with a built-in neural processor optimized for machine learning workloads.
A built-in neural engine on a consumer desktop’s processor is not hardware meant to run heavy ML workloads. Today, the majority of companies have to rent cloud data centers or invest in GPUs (not CPUs) from Nvidia to train models and run heavy workloads.
Intel’s positioning is more toward the future where every computer will need some form of AI or ML processing power built into it. The move to include the neural processor in the upcoming CPUs is not to allow people to develop ML apps.
All of the new effects: real-time language translation in your zoom calls, real-time transcription, automation inferencing, relevance portraying, generated content and gaming environments, real-time creator environments through Adobe and others that are doing those as part of the client, new productivity tools — being able to do local legal brief generations on a clients, one after the other, right? Across every aspect of consumer, developer and enterprise efficiency use cases, we see that there’s going to be a raft of AI enablement and those will be client-centered. Those will also be at the edge.
Pat Gelsinger, CEO, Intel
On the other hand, Intel is also aiming at Microsoft’s potential partnership with rival AMD and wants to enter the AI market from any direction.
Notably, Intel competitor AMD has also introduced “Ryzen AI,” a dedicated AI engine on its latest series of Ryzen 7000 mobile (laptop) processors. Apple’s M2 chip is also a powerful machine learning friendly SoC (a combination of a processor and a GPU) that has been well-known for TensorFlow, PyTorch, and Keras workflows.
As per industry predictions such as from WePC, it’s likely that Intel’s 14th generation of CPUs called Meteor Lake will drop in October 2023.
