“What do you do during the holidays?” asked Pat Gelsinger, CEO of Intel at the AI Everywhere event.
“You all gather around the tree and take a family photo. So kids, papa’s here,” said Gelsinger while posing with the upcoming nodes, with Intel 7, Intel Core Ultra, Intel 3 which is going into production next year, Intel 20A which he calls a work of art, and the last 18A, which would be available by the end of next year and developing in the fab.
Gelsinger, with all his energy, starts the event at the Big Apple, New York City. “I don’t know if you have heard about this thing called AI, but boy, this year” has been all about it.
Intel aims to deliver 100 million client processors, which is five times more than any of the competitors. “We think 2024 marks the era of AI PC and that will be the star of the show in this coming year,” said Gelsinger. During the presentation, a slide showcased the company’s partnership with almost all the OEM providers, and the clients say that the processors are working tremendously.
Augmented Intelligence (AI) everywhere
At the event, Gelsinger and his team announced the launch of Intel Core Ultra and Intel Arc GPUs for pushing the goal of making every PC in the world an AI PC. This will be achieved by its partnership with Dell, Lenovo, HP, Supermicro, and Microsoft, for bringing the hardware onto their devices.
“When we think about artificial intelligence, we think of something we may not understand or may not control,” said Gelsinger, “We think it’s a disservice to think about it that way. Instead, maybe augmented intelligence, how we integrate it into our human lives and to human intelligence, how we make it part of us in everything that we do. And we think that bringing this value into the human experience is the opportunity for AI”
He said this narrating a personal story, where he emphasised the transformative power of AI-enhanced Starkey Hearing aids which changed his perspective entirely. “These are making me better. It’s not something over there. It’s right here augmenting my human experience.”
AI PCs everywhere
The AI PC concept aims to bring the same vision by bringing AI capabilities directly to personal computers, allowing users to run generative AI chatbots, like ChatGPT, locally, without relying on cloud data centres, and even for inference models such as Llama 2.
This development is particularly significant for enhancing data security, a crucial aspect for business and enterprise users. But more than that, the AI PC concept is about bringing AI to everyone. This was also highlighted at AMD’s Advancing AI event with the launch of Ryzen AI PCs for the exact same purpose.
Furthermore, he announced the launch of the 5th generation of Xeon processors, for powering the data centres of its partners, which includes major cloud providers such as IBM, Google, and Microsoft.
Why Intel?
“Are we going to dedicate a third and a half of all of the Earth’s energy to these computing technologies? No, they must be sustainable, as well,” Gelsinger discusses the convergence of high-performance computing and AI, emphasising sustainability as a crucial factor.
Intel’s unique position in the industry, marked by openness, scalability, and end-to-end solutions, allows for the seamless infusion of AI capabilities into every platform. This is well established given that Intel was the first to produce the first commercial microprocessor chip in 1971, and has been the leader in developing components for PCs.
Gelsinger added that Intel is dedicated to developing technologies that enable seamless integration and efficient operation of AI across various applications, both in the cloud and increasingly on local devices such as PCs and edge devices.
“It takes a village of an ecosystem to build to make that happen,” said Christoph Schell, Executive Vice President at Intel, highlighting how the company has been investing in edge computing since 2018 with software like oneAPI and OpenVINO, and now has around 90,000 edge deployment applications.
“Why do Intel customers like us? They like our open approach,” said Schell, touching upon data, technology stack, engineering, and most importantly, the ecosystem. “They like that we’re predictable.”
“I like to just have one other little thing to show off here and they just brought it out of the lab,” walked in Gelsinger with the first ever Gaudi3 processor. “They are not just on PowerPoints, They are real,” concluded Gelsinger and urged everyone to go do Christmas shopping.
