Who's Who in AI SoCs

Junko Yoshida, EETimes
November 1, 2018

MADISON, Wis. — Beyond big guns like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Baidu, who have been designing their own chips for deep learning (both for training and inference), we’re hearing — almost weekly — about “nouvelle” AI SoC architectures invented by startups that nobody’s ever heard of.

The flood of AI chip announcements prompted one veteran industry analyst, Kevin Krewell of Tirias Research, to remind us: “There’s a lot of claims and counter-claims in machine-learning processing, but it’s only working silicon and software that can tell us” their real capabilities.

Indeed, many of these products won’t reach market this year or even next. There is no way of knowing what’s real and what’s smoke and mirrors — until there’s an actual chip.

However, a recent interview with Kurt Shuler, vice president of marketing at Arteris Inc., reminded us that sometimes the answer to what’s really happening in a nascent, overhyped market like AI chips lies deeper in the food chain.

Who are at play?

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