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Apple Is Working On a Dedicated Chip To Power AI On Devices (bloomberg.com)
According to Bloomberg, Apple is working on a processor devoted specifically to AI-related tasks. "The chip, known internally as the Apple Neural Engine, would improve the way the company's devices handle tasks that would otherwise require human intelligence -- such as facial recognition and speech recognition," reports Bloomberg, citing a person familiar with the matter. From the report: Engineers at Apple are racing to catch their peers at Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc. in the booming field of artificial intelligence. While Siri gave Apple an early advantage in voice-recognition, competitors have since been more aggressive in deploying AI across their product lines, including Amazon's Echo and Google's Home digital assistants. An AI-enabled processor would help Cupertino, California-based Apple integrate more advanced capabilities into devices, particularly cars that drive themselves and gadgets that run augmented reality, the technology that superimposes graphics and other information onto a person's view of the world. Apple devices currently handle complex artificial intelligence processes with two different chips: the main processor and the graphics chip. The new chip would let Apple offload those tasks onto a dedicated module designed specifically for demanding artificial intelligence processing, allowing Apple to improve battery performance.
What could possibly go wro-
KILL ALL HUMANS
Wouldn't it be easier for Apple to use its massive cash hoard and acquire Cyberdyne?
ASICs have always had their use (literally) but seem to have exploded into mainstream with Bitcoin. Now it seems everyone is working on their own "AI" chip, which is fancy wording for "We put these most commonly used functions in silicon". Intel is now putting FPGAs into their Xeon chips so that customers can start speeding up their workflows.
We've kind of tapped out x86 performance lately. My 6 year old laptop is still fairly competitive. I have phone 5 generations old and it's "good enough". Are companies going to now turn to ASICs to get the competitive edge?
.. by people, and for the people...
Did I miss something? Hype, yes. But boom? I was always under the impression that a boom first and foremost requires some kind of product that you could sell.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
we we've tested the hell out of Siri. The only command we've found that works more than 25% of the time is the pattern "set timer for N minutes." Nothing else works well.
Apple Neural Engine + Boston Dynamics' Atlas + Fleshlight
and I'm a buyer.
is apple itself.
Du. Du hast. Du hast mich. And with AI, you can take that literally.
Not a single time. The company I work for makes voice-controls for machinery to be used by the disabled, so we were very curious about Siri. Even with high quality microphones, training, and simple one word commands, our stuff still isn't 100% reliable even after over twenty-five years since we delivered our first voice-controller sewing machine to Goodwill. Voice control, especially speaker-independent, isn't anywhere nearly ready for consumers.
The computer which controlled the machines, Skynet, sent two Terminators back through time.
We'll find out at WWDC if this thing is actually completed. If it is, there's a chance the 2017 iPhone models may incorporate this chip specifically to speed up Siri.
They're not becoming slow. Unlike in the 90s, when kicking up the MHz did result in a corresponding performance boost, the same does not happen when one increases the number of cores & threads. Software has to be written & fine-tuned for these greater CPUs. Otherwise, all they are good at doing is running more processes, like for instance, this Firefox session w/ 16 tabs.
I'm right now typing this on a Dell Inspiron 17 w/ a Core i7 and 8GB of RAM. Runs just fine. My other laptop is a Pentium quad core, and 4GB of RAM running Windows 10. Even there, Windows 10 runs fine. Yeah, for games, I could use a greater computer, but other than that, for now, this one suffices.
"Hold my cane bitch. Let me introduce myself, I'm a pimp named slickback."
" hello Mr. Slickback"
"Bitch, I'm a pimp named slickback"
"Ok slickback"
"Noooo, my name is "a pimp named slickback"
"Uhhh, ok"
- the boondocks.
Dared to lowercase "a", but not "On", "To", or "On". I guess that makes this news More Impressive.
So that gets us to:
Oh oh, lameness filter activated:
* nice main verb: "is working on"
* nice pablum phrase: "dedicated chip"
* nice cliche: "to power"
* nice hipster slang: "devices"
Hmm, how about:
Clearly iAI is pronounce "aye yai".
[*] By the way, Apple, for you that's Aye Yai(TM). Me first. Ching ching.
You could call it the Apple Neural United Server
I don't want an AI chip from "we delegate to you the right to use it they way we want" Apple. It's too much of a target for agencies like the FBI to resist the temptation of "securing" it for our "protection".