AI-enabled Chips: Intelligent Technologies to Grow Smarter
The hype around AI-enabled chips has got a solid ground behind it. You must have learnt that these chips will soon be making their way into the latest smartphones. Some brands have already integrated AI-enabled chips in their models.
AI, unlike other software, is heavily reliant on specialized processors to complement the CPU. Even the most advanced CPU is not capable of improving the training speed in an AI model. An additional hardware is required by the model during inferencing to carry out complicated mathematical computations. As a result, the tasks like facial recognition and object detection can be accomplished at faster speeds.
In 2018, the AI chip market was estimated to be at $6,638 million. By 2025, this is expected to reach the benchmark of $91,185.1 million.This indicates that between 2019 and 2025, it will register a CAGR of 45.2%.
Artificial Intelligence has already disrupted most of the industries for a good cause. AI can reduce the burden of accomplishing various tasks to a substantial extent.
Leading manufacturers are focusing on AI-enabled chips
Leading manufacturers like NVIDIA, NVIDIA, Qualcomm and AMD will be shipping specialized chips in 2019, which will further boost up the functionality of AI-enabled applications. The developers are optimizing these chips for particular purposes.
Some of the particular cases where these optimized chips will prove handy include natural language processing, computer vision and speech recognition. In the automobile and healthcare industries, the next-generation applications will be dependent on these chips, providing intelligent solutions to the end-users.
In 2019, leading infrastructure companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook will invest more on FPGA (field programmable gate arrays) based on custom chips and ASIC (application specific integrated circuits).
These heavily optimized chips will be used to manage modern workloads, based on HPC (high-performance computing). The developers are also coming up with certain chips, which will help to speed up next-generation databases, along with predictive analytics and query processing.
Benefits of using AI chips in smartphones
For some time in recent past, smartphones have been benefiting from AI. However, the processing has been carried out either through offloaded cloud platforms or the main GPU or CPU chipset.
The new generation chips have one clear advantage, as it enables onboard processing. It will lower the response time and make the processing more effective. In the process, it will lead to a lower consumption of power, increasing the battery life significantly.
On-device AI hardware has another benefit, as it warrants a better security and privacy of data. When you use this technology, you can keep your biometric and other sensitive data on the device.
It is not mandatory to store them in the cloud system. As a result, the data owner can exercise a complete control over it. Through this mechanism, the data is not sent to the model, instead, the model is brought to the data.
How are AI-chips changing contemporary technologies?
It should be noted that the developers have been able to access these capabilities of the chips only recently. The third-party AI-enabled apps are presently being developed. The software developers are facing the dearth of adequate tools, and in the process, they are facing bottlenecks in the production process.
However, the leading companies are collaborating with the leading developers. One of the problems that they need to overcome is the availability of low cost, relevant and sufficiently labelled training data. As a result, the major part of AI functionality in mobile devices is restricted to the proprietary apps of smartphone manufacturers.
However, certain technologies have already made their way into reality. Take Apple’s Face ID functionality as an instance. For a long time, facial recognition has been an important area of developing deep learning computer vision systems.
Apart from biometric security systems that call for high accuracy and security, such as Face ID, the leading manufacturers are incorporating deep learning in identifying elements in various images. These include faces, scenes, objects and people.
AI-enabled clips will benefit future technologies
AI chips can bolster future technologies as well, particular from ‘edge inference’ on devices. This will enable smartphone networks enabled with AI chips to coordinate as they work.
In each of these devices, the data will be stored privately and locally, and this will train the shared models. As a result, huge volumes of personal data can be aggregated, while ensuring the privacy and security of the users.
These applications are yet to be properly conceptualized, but with the powerful AI-chips, you can expect them to be developed faster than anticipated. For instance, Apple has already demonstrated the Bionic Chip’s Neural Engine, that can map the face of a user into animated emojis.
You must have heard of Apple’s Siri. Several smartphone manufacturers have already come up with duplicated technologies, in terms of ‘generic virtual assistants. For these voice assistants, the Artificial Intelligence processing may now be done in offboard platforms like cloud.
However, with the coming of onboard AI hardware, the users can benefit from better personalization. In future, the technologies will grow more sophisticated, that will ensure lower latency and higher accuracy.
Conclusion
The integration of AI chips in smartphones has been quite recent. Therefore, it might be considered that we are still in the initial stages of this trend. It might take some time for the first stage of development to become visible.
These are likely to revolve around the basic functionalities of a smartphone, such as text entry, camera, map and navigation, search, and so on. The smartphone users will benefit from enhanced security, accuracy and better power optimization.
In the coming years, further advancement of the AI chip is likely to bring brand new experiences for smartphone users. They might be able to achieve a level of personalization that was previously impossible.
Advancements in predictions and accuracy are also on the cards. Eventually, AI-enabled chips will shape the customer experience to a substantial extent. Business firms need to remain proactive and collaborate with the software developers to integrate the advanced technology in their apps.
