The Intel Core Ultra mobile processor family brings AI to PCs, while 5th Gen Intel Xeon processors offer AI acceleration for data centers.
Today at the Intel AI Everywhere event in New York City, Intel announced the general availability of the Intel Core Ultra mobile processor family, delivering faster AI performance for graphic designers, smart factories and more. The 5th Gen Intel Xeon processor family, coming next year to OEMs and cloud service providers, has AI acceleration in all of its cores. Plus, Intel is making progress with manufacturing its Gaudi3 AI accelerator.
Intel’s overall goal is to proliferate what Intel is calling AI PCs, meaning on-chip AI for laptops and data centers, allowing more hardware to run generative AI more efficiently. Acer, Asus, Lenovo, LG, Dell, HP, MSI, Samsung and more laptop makers include Intel chips in their devices.
“Intel is on a mission to bring AI everywhere through exceptionally engineered platforms, secure solutions and support for open ecosystems,” Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger said in a press release.
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Intel Core Ultra mobile processor family is generally available
The key differentiator of the Intel Core Ultra mobile processor family (Figure A) is the on-chip AI accelerator, or neural processing unit; this makes these products especially suitable for running generative AI locally, Intel said.
According to Intel, the Intel Core Ultra mobile processor family has 2.5x better power efficiency than the previous generation. Its world-class Intel Arc GPU and CPU are each capable of speeding up AI solutions; this required a massive change in how Intel assembles its microchips. The Intel Core Ultra family is manufactured using the new Intel 4 process with extreme ultraviolet.
Figure A
Intel worked with more than 100 software vendors to bring AI-boosted applications to the market that run well on Intel Core Ultra, including Adobe Premiere Pro.
Intel Core Ultra-based AI PCs are generally available today from Acer, ASUS, Dell, Dynabook, Gigabyte, Google Chromebook, HP, Lenovo, LG, Microsoft Surface, MSI and Samsung in the U.S.
5th Gen Intel Xeon processor family is coming next year
The 5th Gen Intel Xeon processor family (Figure B) is a data center processor with built-in AI acceleration, optimized to run large language models like GPT-4 or Llama 2. The 5th Gen Intel Xeon processor, offers up to 42% higher inference and fine-tuning on models as large as 20 billion parameters, Intel said.
Figure B
5th Gen Intel Xeon processors achieved up to 2.7x better query throughput on the IBM watsonx.data platform compared to previous-generation Xeon processors during testing, Intel said. Google Cloud plans to deploy 5th Gen Xeon next year. 5th Gen Intel Xeon processors will be generally available in Q1 2024 from certain OEMs including Cisco, Dell, HPE, IEIT Systems, Lenovo, Super Micro Computer and others. Major cloud service providers are expected to launch 5th Gen Xeon processor-based instances throughout 2024.
SEE: 5th Gen Xeon processors and the AI PC concept were first announced by Intel in September. (TechRepublic)
Intel Gaudi3 AI accelerator is revealed
The Intel Gaudi3 is an accelerator for deep learning and large-scale generative AI models. At the AI Everywhere event, Gelsinger showed a Gaudi3 AI accelerator for the first time in public and said the Gaudi3 is now out of fab.
The company is on track to release the Intel Gaudi3 AI accelerator next year.
Intel’s philosophy on tech and the advantages of AI
“When we think about technology, is it good or bad?” said Gelsinger at the AI Everywhere event. “It’s mostly neutral. It’s our job to shape it into a force for good.”
Gelsinger predicts more AI inference will happen at the edge in the future. A small number of companies will train AI, but many more will perform inferencing on models that need to run locally and as close as possible to devices. That’s the world Intel wants to release its AI PCs into, putting large language models into every PC.
Note: TechRepublic is covering the Intel AI Everywhere event virtually.
