Intel’s New AI Chips Aim to Achieve Human Brain-Like Processing Power

Intel has unveiled a new range of CPU chips designed specifically to address the monstrous computing needs of a modern-day AI system. The chips are based on their ‘Pohoiki Beach’ architecture, and each chip has 64 Loihi-AI processors on board. These are defined by Intel as neuromorphic chips as they seek to imitate the learning ability of human brains with low electrical power usage which is an important cost to consider in today’s data centres. Intel claims that Pohoiki Beach can perform certain data crunching tasks up to 1000x faster than standard CPU’s and GPU’s whilst at the same time using much less power. Intel have said that they hope to release a Pohoiki Beach based system which has the processing power of 100 million neurons by the end of 2019. This may seem like a lot but it still some way shy of the 100 billion neurons found in a typical human brain.