South Korean startup Rebellions has released a new AI chip called the Atom, Reuters reported on the first day of the week. The new chip is an attempt by the startup to compete with US chipmaker Nvidia, which currently dominates the AI chip market.
Rebellions aims to provide domain specific AI processor as well as optimized software. "This approach, as well as our unique decentralized programming model, will allow service customers to equip themselves with the most powerful and energy-efficient AI hardware, as well as seamless software integration," the company stated on its site.
Rebellions is backed by one of the largest telecom operators in S. Korea, KT, which is both an investor and potential customer of Rebellions' service.
The Atom chip is "developed to excel at running artificial intelligence and computer vision chatbot applications," Rebellions co-founder and director Park Sunghyun told Reuters. "Because it focuses on specific tasks rather than doing wide gamut, the chip only consumes about 100% of the power of an Nvidia AXNUMX chip for those tasks," he said.
Analysts believe the new Rebellions chip could boost South Korea's ability to compete in the AI chip space currently dominated by Nvidia.
“This Rebellions Atom AI chip will compete with Nvidia AI chips. AI chips are the fastest developing segment of semiconductors. It is good to have competition in this field,” said Pareekh Jain, director of Pareekh Consulting.
So, "it has a good chance to rise up and become a contender for Nvidia," he said.
The South Korean government has tried to boost research and development in the field of AI chips in a bid to bolster its presence in the family data center market. The government plans to allocate almost €800 million over the next 5 years, and demand for AI chips is expected to account for one third of total chip demand by XNUMX.
AI chips are used in compute-intensive environments such as the cloud, conversational AI, generative AI like ChatGPT, computer vision, robotics, the metaverse, autonomous vehicles, quantum computing, blockchain, etc. cryptocurrencies, cybersecurity and payments.
However, Jain said that one of the biggest challenges in adopting new technology is cost. “The widespread availability of cost-effective AI chips is going to help democratize many of these new technologies,” Jain said.
CIOs and CTOs in each and every industry require AI chips for compute-intensive workloads. So far, options have been limited, with Nvidia controlling the lion's share of the market. If Rebellions can grow, it can present itself as a good alternative to Nvidia.
“Competition is always good for acquisitions. As we saw throughout the chip shortage, companies felt the need to diversify both chip vendors and geographies to avoid supply chain hazards and delays,” Jain said. .
"Rebellions with the S. Korea ecosystem can be a good alternative option both as a distributor and as a geographic area," Jain said. "And if Rebellions is attractively priced and offers performance that matches or exceeds Nvidia's, that can work in the CIO's favor, even on the cost front."
Copyright © two thousand twenty-three IDG Communications, Inc.