Nvidia Bets Big on Intel With $5 Billion Stake With Palki Sharma

Recommendable! Maybe Nvidia is trying to reduce its dependence on TSMC! From this perspective, Nvidia made a great move!

Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan invested in hundreds of Chinese companies, some with military ties

"Conflict of interest?" Somebody in hot water? Will he have to disinvest like TikTok?

Will he be invited by President Trump for an interview in the White House? Just kidding!

"Summary

• Tan invested in over 600 Chinese firms, some linked to China's military
• Investments raise concerns because of Intel's role in US national security
• Intel says Tan disclosed potential conflicts of interest before becoming CEO
• Chinese databases list many Tan investments as current, extent of divestitures unclear ...

Reuters' review found that Tan controls more than 40 Chinese companies and funds as well as minority stakes in over 600 via investment firms he manages or owns. In many instances, he shares minority stake ownership with Chinese government entities.

Several investors interviewed by Reuters expressed concern that the scope of Tan’s investments could complicate the task of reviving Intel. Along with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co and Samsung Electronics Co, Intel is one of three companies in the world making the most advanced computer chips, and the only one based in the U.S. ...

It is not illegal for U.S. citizens to hold stakes in Chinese companies, even those with ties to the Chinese military, unless those companies have been added to the U.S. Treasury's Chinese Military-Industrial Complex Companies List, which explicitly bans such investments.

Reuters found no evidence that Tan is currently invested directly in any company on the U.S. Treasury's list. ...

Tan invested at least $200 million in hundreds of Chinese advanced manufacturing and chip firms between March 2012 and December 2024, including in contractors and suppliers for the People's Liberation Army, according to a review of Chinese corporate databases cross-referenced with U.S. and analyst lists of companies with connections to the Chinese military.  ..."

Intel CEO invested in hundreds of Chinese companies, some with military ties | Reuters

Credits: Techcrunch newsletter

Broadcom, TSMC reportedly exploring deals that would split up Intel

Is this serious or is this a rumor? What is going on?

"Broadcom and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) are separately exploring deals to take over parts of Intel, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

Broadcom is reportedly considering an acquisition of Intel’s chip-design and marketing business, and would want a partner for the company’s manufacturing business, while 

TSMC is reportedly looking at controlling some or all of Intel’s chip plants, potentially as part of an investor consortium. ..."

Broadcom, TSMC reportedly exploring deals that would split up Intel | TechCrunch

Intel Announces Retirement of CEO Pat Gelsinger (age 63) with a puny severance package of only $10m

Good news! He did not last very long, only started in February 2021!

This is a great opportunity for Intel. Maybe now with a new CEO it will better compete with e.g. Nvidia!

Was Gelsinger a chip of the old block? Let the chips fall where they may! 😊

"... At age 32, he was named the youngest vice president in Intel's history. Mentored by Intel CEO Andrew Grove, Gelsinger became the company's CTO in 2001, leading key technology developments, including Wi-Fi, USB, Intel Core and Intel Xeon processors, and 14 chip projects. He launched the Intel Developer Forum conference as a counterpart to Microsoft's WinHEC.

In September 2009, he left Intel to join EMC as president and chief operating officer.[17] In 2012, he became the CEO of VMware. ..." (Wikipedia)

Intel Announces Retirement of CEO Pat Gelsinger :: Intel Corporation (INTC)

Intel’s ex-CEO Pat Gelsinger set to net more than $10M in severance pay "For comparison, WeWork’s founder Adam Neumann somehow left the company with well over $400 million, and former Yahoo CEO Marissa Meyer left with a cool $54.9 million."

"Effective Dec. 1, 2024, Intel Corporation CEO Pat Gelsinger has retired from the company and stepped down from the board of directors."

Intel Axes 15,000 Jobs, Brings Back Coffee to Boost Morale with Palki Sharma

Bad news!

Qualcomm Approached Intel About a Takeover in Recent Days

This is huge news! Consolidation in the chip making industry? Until not long ago Intel was considered to be a blue chip (no pun intended).

Will this trigger antitrust action?

"Chip giant Qualcomm made a takeover approach to rival Intel in recent days, according to people familiar with the matter, in what would be one of the largest and most consequential deals in recent years. ..."

"Intel has fallen from global chip champion to takeover target.

Three years ago, Intel was worth more than double its current value, and Chief Executive Pat Gelsinger was on the prowl for acquisitions. Now Intel itself is a takeover target, in a sign of how strategic missteps and the artificial-intelligence boom have combined to reshape the fortunes of America’s most storied semiconductor company. A recent acquisition approach by Qualcomm reflects a vulnerability with few precedents in Intel’s 56-year history."

Exclusive | Qualcomm Approached Intel About a Takeover in Recent Days  - WSJ "Deal for Intel would be massive and come as chip maker is sputtering"

The Wall Street Journal What's news

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Japan to establish chip research center with Intel

Good news! We need all the best chips we can get!

"U.S. chipmaker Intel and a Japanese national research institute will build a research and development center in Japan for cutting-edge semiconductor manufacturing technology to boost the country's chip manufacturing equipment and materials industries, where Japan has strengths.

 

The new facility, to be built in three to five years, will have extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) equipment. Manufacturers of equipment and materials companies will pay a fee to use the facility for prototyping and testing. This will be the first center in Japan where members of the industry will be able to make joint use of EUV equipment."

Japan to establish chip research center with Intel - Nikkei Asia

Intel's Stunning Troubles Underscore The Folly Of Government Welfare For Corporations with Steve Forbes

Very recommendable! Most government subsidies for businesses are a waste of taxpayers money!

Intel's Hala Point, the world's largest neuromorphic computer, has 1.15 billion neurons

Good news! What a marvel!

"Three years after introducing its second-generation "neuromorphic" computer chip, Intel on Wednesday announced the company has assembled 1,152 of the parts into a single, parallel-processing system called Hala Point, in partnership with the US Department of Energy's Sandia National Laboratories.

The Hala Point system's 1,152 Loihi 2 chips enable a total of 1.15 billion artificial neurons, Intel said, "and 128 billion synapses distributed over 140,544 neuromorphic processing cores." That is an increase from the previous Intel multi-chip Loihi system, debuted in 2020, called Pohoiki Springs, which used just 768 Loihi 1 chips.

Sandia Labs intends to use the system for what it calls "brain-scale computing research," to solve problems in areas of device physics, computer architecture, computer science, and informatics. ...
Neuromorphic computing is an umbrella term given to a variety of efforts to build computation that resembles some aspect of the way the brain is formed. The term goes back to early 1980s work by legendary computing pioneer Carver Mead, who was interested in how the increasingly dense collections of transistors on a chip could best communicate. Mead's insight was that the wires between transistors would have to achieve some of the efficiency of the brain's neural wiring. ..."

"... About Hala Point: Loihi 2 neuromorphic processors, which form the basis for Hala Point, apply brain-inspired computing principles, such as asynchronous, event-based spiking neural networks (SNNs), integrated memory and computing, and sparse and continuously changing connections to achieve orders-of-magnitude gains in energy consumption and performance. Neurons communicate directly with one another rather than communicating through memory, reducing overall power consumption. ...
Hala Point integrates processing, memory, and communication channels in a massively parallelized fabric, providing a total of 16 petabytes per second (PB/s) of memory bandwidth, 3.5 PB/s of inter-core communication bandwidth, and 5 terabytes per second (TB/s) of inter-chip communication bandwidth. The system can process over 380 trillion 8-bit synapses and over 240 trillion neuron operations per second. ..."

Intel's Hala Point, the world's largest neuromorphic computer, has 1.15 billion neurons | ZDNET The Hala Point machine brings compute efficiency that rivals GPUs and CPUs on some tasks, Intel said.

Intel Builds World’s Largest Neuromorphic System to Enable More Sustainable AI Hala Point, the industry’s first 1.15 billion neuron neuromorphic system, builds a path toward more efficient and scalable AI.

A human brain is still much smaller and can do more and much more energy efficient! 😊

Intel announces the 'AI PC' to run generative AI on a laptop

Good news! Competition is good, more competition is better!

"A new Intel chip due in December will be able to run a generative artificial intelligence chatbot on a laptop rather than having to tap into cloud data centers for computing power ...
At the conference, Intel demonstrated laptops that could generate a song in the style of Taylor Swift and answer questions in a conversational style, all while disconnected from the Internet. ...

Intel executives also said the company is on track to deliver a successor chip called "Arrow Lake" next year, and that Intel's manufacturing technology will rival the best from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co ..."

Intel pitches the 'AI PC' at software developer event | Reuters

Credits: Last Week in AI

Intel announces silicon photonics advancement towards optical I/O

Good news!

"Intel has demonstrated an eight-wavelength laser array on a silicon wafer. The research paves the way for the next generation of integrated silicon photonics products in the data center, such as switches with co-packaged optics and chiplets for optical interconnects. ...
More specifically, the laser uses a technology called dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) in order to send different, closely spaced wavelengths over the same optical link. This technique thus increases the bandwidth while also reducing the physical size of the photonic chips. ..."

Intel announces silicon photonics advancement towards optical I/O | VentureBeat

Intel works with Deci to speed up machine learning on its chips

Intel is playing catch up to Nvidia and Google TPUs! Welcome to more computer hardware competition! The computing requirements for state of the art AI/ML are enormous! Better hardware is needed!

"Intel today announced a strategic business and technology collaboration with Deci to optimize machine learning on the former’s processors ...
Deci achieves runtime acceleration through a combination of data preprocessing and loading, selecting model architectures and hyperparameters (i.e., the variables that influence a model’s predictions) as well as datasets optimized for inference. It also takes care of steps like deployment, serving, monitoring, and explainability. Deci’s accelerator redesigns models to create new models with several computation routes, all optimized for a given inference device.

Deci’s router component ensures that each data input is directed via the proper route. (Each route is specialized with a prediction task.) As for the company’s accelerator, it works in synergy with other compression techniques like pruning and quantization. The accelerator can even act as a multiplier for complementary acceleration solutions such as AI compilers and specialized hardware, according to the company. ...
Deci was cofounded by Geifman, entrepreneur Jonathan Elial, and Ran El-Yaniv, a computer science professor at Technion in Haifa, Israel."

Intel works with Deci to speed up machine learning on its chips | VentureBeat

Intel's $900 million acquisition of Moovit has a place in the Guinness book of records for the biggest deal in which the parties never met face-to-face

Thanks to Covid-19!

How Moovit planned its own route to a dream destination - Globes: Moovit CEO Nir Erez says Intel's $900 million acquisition has a place in the Guinness book of records for the biggest deal in which the parties never met face-to-face.

Intel debuts Pohoiki Springs, a powerful neuromorphic research system for AI workloads

Good news! Hardware is the limiting factor of AI, but with every passing day less so!

"... a powerful self-contained neuromorphic system that’s about the size of five standard servers. ... a tool to scale up their neuromorphic research and explore ways to accelerate workloads that run slowly on today’s conventional architectures. ... is similar in neural capacity to the brain of a small mammal, with 768 Loihi chips and 100 million neurons spread across 24 Arria10 FPGA Nahuku expansion boards (containing 32 chips each) that operate at under 500 watts. ... "

Intel debuts Pohoiki Springs, a powerful neuromorphic research system for AI workloads | VentureBeat: Intel this morning debuted Pohoiki Springs, a powerful neuromorphic research system for AI workloads. It'll be made available to select partners soon.

Neuromorphic Chips Mimic Fine Noses

Good news! Below are two articles describing what appears to be two different, but promising efforts using neuromorphic chips! "pav[ing] the way for neuromorphic systems that can diagnose diseases, detect weapons and explosives, find narcotics, and spot signs of smoke and carbon monoxide. ... This work is a prime example of contemporary research at the crossroads of neuroscience and artificial intelligence"

"Intel’s 14-nanometer Loihi chip has a 60-millimeter die size and contains over 2 billion transistors, 130,000 artificial neurons, and 130 million synapses, as well as three managing Lakemont cores for orchestration."

"... neuromorphic AI’s keen sense of smell in muddled samples. The neuromorphic AI simply added acetone to its scent-recognition repertoire, but the standard AI couldn’t learn acetone without forgetting the smell of toluene. These kinds of memory lapses [catastrophic forgetting] are a major limitation of current AI. Continual learning seems to work well for the neuromorphic system when there are few scents involved ... Another perk of the neuromorphic setup is that the AI can keep learning new smells after its original training if new neurons are added to the network, similar to the way that new cells continually form in the brain."

Intel trains neuromorphic chip to detect 10 different odors | VentureBeat: In a newly published paper, researchers at Intel and Cornell University demonstrate that Intel's neuromorphic chip can be taught to identify various odors.

An AI that mimics how mammals smell recognizes scents better than other AI This kind of algorithm could be used in testing air quality or diagnosing medical conditions