The neural network processor Chip giant Intel is seen as a latecomer to the much-hyped artificial intelligence market. Nvidia, maker of graphics chips, has emerged as the key hardware platform for the latest developments in deep learning, an important branch of AI that involves training computers using huge piles of data. But coming later this year is Intel's attempt to fight back with its first chip dedicated to running AI operations. And the company has signed up a big collaborator with this first run: Facebook. "We are thrilled to have Facebook in close collaboration sharing their technical insights as we bring this new generation of AI hardware to market," Intel CEO Brian Krzanich wrote in a blog post published Tuesday morning. Intel is making the first-generation version of the chip available to only a limited set of partners -- like Facebook -- to get feedback for the second version due out sometime next year. Facebook is important player in AI in both research -- run by deep learning pioneer Yann LeCun -- as well as applying the latest AI techniques widely across its social network. Intel is calling the upcoming chip a neural network processor (or NNP), formerly codenamed Lake Crest. As the chip's name suggests, the processor is optimized for running neural networks, another name for deep learning. "It's the first chip product in the world specific to neural networks," said Naveen Rao, a corporate vice president of the AI unit at Intel, in an interview. Rao said the chip wold work well for both inference, which involves simply running the algorithms, and training the AI models, which is the more computationally intensive part where Nvidia currently dominates. Nvidia's graphics processors (or GPUs) have taken off in deep learning because of their ability to compute in parallel. A GPU has thousands of tiny computers operating in parallel, each dedicated to rendering the pixels. A few years ago, researchers discovered that the capabilities of GPUs were almost ideally suited to running deep learning algorithms, which also require thousands of parallel computations. Intel said the NNP would also do well with computing in parallel using a number of new chip designs. Intel plans to release performance benchmarks for its AI chip later this year. Rao has been working on this chip since 2014 when he founded AI startup Nervana, which Intel acquired for $400 million last year. Because the chip project began outside of Intel, the first chip will be manufactured by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, not Intel. Intel said it would take over manufacturing with the second version and make the hardware more available than the first chip. Intel continues dominate an overwhelming share (99%) of the market for central processing units (or CPUs) in the data center, but Nvidia's graphics processors have become essential for the latest AI developments and its data center business is booming. In Nvidia's most recent financial quarter reported in August, its data center business revenue was $416 million, up 175% year-over-year. Meanwhile, in Intel's most recent financial quarter reported in July, its data center business was much larger with $4.4 billion in revenue, but grew only 9% from the previous year. As a result, Nvidia's stock has nearly tripled in the past 12 months, while Intel's stock is up less than 6% over the same period. In this new era of AI, Intel is having to move beyond its general-purpose CPU to keep up and has acquired a number of companies. The biggest was in 2015 when it acquired Altera, maker of field-programmable gate arrays, for $16.7 billion. Last month, the company said it's even working on a neuromorphic chip that attempts to function like a real brain, though that project is more experimental and is years away from commercialization. “The strength of Intel is our broad portfolio," Rao claimed. "There isn’t a one size fits all." Nvidia has also moved into more AI specialization with its hardware. Its latest graphics chip architecture -- named Volta -- contains so-called Tensor Cores, which are specialized computers designed to run the mathematical operations used in deep learning software. (Read more: The New Intel: How Nvidia Went From Powering Video Games To Revolutionizing Artificial Intelligence)
apple has partnered with apple on the creation of the hardware company 's first AI chip . The neural network protocol ( AI ) chip is likely Intel 's attempt to catch up with rival Nvidia , which has so far entered the emerging market in the " deep learning " chips which are central to the development of AI . The first version of Intel 's new chip will be made available to a limited number of users , including Facebook , which will then contribute feedback to the development of the second version , which is due to be released next year .