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South Korean startup Rebellions Inc launches a man-made intelligence (AI) chip on Monday, racing to win authorities contracts as Seoul seeks a spot for native corporations within the exploding AI trade.
The corporate’s ATOM chip is the most recent Korean try to problem international chief Nvidia Corp within the {hardware} that powers the possibly revolutionary AI expertise.
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AI is the discuss of the tech world, as ChatGPT – a chatbot from Microsoft-backed OpenAI that generates articles, essays, jokes and even poetry – has turn out to be the fastest-growing shopper app in historical past simply two months after launch, in accordance with UBS.
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Nvidia, a U.S. chip designer, has a commanding share of high-end AI chips, making up about 86% of the computing energy of the world’s six largest cloud providers as of December, in accordance with Jefferies chip analyst Mark Lipacis.
The South Korean authorities desires to foster a home trade, investing greater than $800 million over the subsequent 5 years for analysis and growth in a bid to raise the market share of Korean AI chips in home information facilities from basically zero to 80% by 2030.
“It’s onerous to catch as much as Nvidia, which is thus far forward in general-purpose AI chips,” stated Kim Yang-Paeng, senior researcher on the Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Commerce. “Nevertheless it’s not set in stone as a result of AI chips can perform totally different features and there aren’t set boundaries or metrics.”
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Rebellions’ ATOM is designed to excel at operating laptop imaginative and prescient and chatbot AI purposes. As a result of it targets particular duties relatively than doing a variety, the chip consumes solely about 20% of the facility of an Nvidia A100 chip on these duties, stated Rebellions co-founder and chief govt Park Sunghyun.
A100 is the preferred chip for AI workloads, highly effective sufficient to create – in trade lingo, “practice” – the AI fashions. ATOM, designed by Rebellions and manufactured by Korean large Samsung Electronics Co, doesn’t do coaching.
Whereas international locations reminiscent of Taiwan, China, France, Germany and the USA have intensive plans to help their semiconductor corporations, the South Korean authorities is uncommon in singling out AI chips for a concentrated push.
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Seoul will put out a discover this month for 2 information facilities, referred to as neural processing unit farms, with solely home chipmakers allowed to bid, an official on the Ministry of Science and ICT informed Reuters.
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In a rustic whose companies provide half the world’s reminiscence chips, the authorities wish to create a market that may be a check mattress for AI chipmakers, aiming to foster international rivals.
“The federal government is twisting the arm of the info facilities and telling them, ‘Hey, use these chips’,” Rebellions’ Park, a former Morgan Stanley engineer, informed Reuters.
With out such help, he stated, information facilities and their prospects would seemingly follow Nvidia chips.
Sapeon Korea Inc additionally plans to take part within the mission, the SK Telecom Co subsidiary stated.
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FuriosaAI, backed by South Korea’s prime search engine Naver Corp and state-run Korea Improvement Financial institution, informed Reuters it can additionally bid.
“There’s lots of momentum behind Nvidia’s developments. These startups have gotten to construct momentum, so that can take time,” stated Alan Priestley, an analyst at IT analysis agency Gartner. “However authorities incentives reminiscent of what’s taking place in Korea may properly have an effect on the market share inside Korea.”
Rebellions will search to take part within the authorities mission in a consortium with KT Corp, a giant Korean telecom, cloud and information heart operator, within the hopes of weaning Nvidia prospects off the U.S. provider.
“Amid excessive dependence on international GPUs (graphics processing items) globally, the cooperation between KT and Rebellions will permit us to have an ‘AI full stack’ that encompasses software program and {hardware} primarily based on home expertise,” stated KT vice chairman Bae Han-chul.
Rebellions declined to provide a forecast for its AI chip enterprise. It has raised 122 billion gained ($96 million), together with 30 billion gained from KT in a funding spherical joined by Singapore’s Temasek Pavilion Capital and 10 billion gained grant from the South Korean authorities.
(Reporting By Jane Lanhee Lee in Oakland, Calif., and Joyce Lee in Seoul; Enhancing by Miyoung Kim and William Mallard)
