Intel Acquires AI Chip Maker Habana Labs for $2B

[Eniqmatic]

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/moorinsights/2019/12/16/intel-acquires-habana-labs-for-2b

 

Quote

In a strategic move in its datacenter AI plans, Intel has announced that it will acquire Israeli chip startup Habana Labs for $2B. Intel had reaffirmed its plans to deliver its Nervana chips as recently as last month, but the acquisition of Habana likely signals that early lighthouse accounts preferred the startup’s approach over the 2nd attempt with Nervana. It is hard to imagine a scenario where the Nervana chips would play a significant role going forward, but Intel will understandably take a few months to explore its options.

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Among the scores of startups readying hardware for AI, Habana Labs stands out as one of the first to deliver working hardware with impressive performance claims for both training and inference processing. Habana Labs launched its Goya chip for inference processing in September 2018, claiming roughly 3X performance advantage over NVIDIA with lower latency. The company subsequently announced its training chip, Gaudi in June 2019, claiming record performance and an integrated fabric based on industry standards to enable scaling to process very large AI models.

My thoughts: Seems like Intel is trying to finally combat NVIDIA in the AI space which it hasn't managed to do yet, NVIDIA has been pretty much unchallenged at this point. Be interesting to see if they can provide some competition within the next few years, competition is always good!

[TVwazhere]

Interesting. News like this doesn't necessarily mean Intel's now going to be in the Gaming GPU market space any time soon though. (So any of you that were thinking it, dont)

[porina]

I wish I wasn't so ignorant in AI hardware considerations. How do these dedicated solutions fit in the bigger picture, compared to the likes of nvidia tensor cores, or VNNI instructions as part of AVX-512 extensions? Not to mention Cerebras' wafer scale offering...

 

1 hour ago, TVwazhere said:

Interesting. News like this doesn't necessarily mean Intel's now going to be in the Gaming GPU market space any time soon though. (So any of you that were thinking it, dont)

It's not necessarily an either-or thing. They could still do both in parallel assuming they get their fabs in line by the time they're due to hit market. If they remain in constraint, then I guess they'll follow the money.

[Rolling2405]

I don't like that Intel is branching out into so many different markets because that might mean they will no longer put any focus into CPUs for PCs.

[Arika]

9 minutes ago, Thomas001 said:

I don't like that Intel is branching out into so many different markets because that might mean they will no longer put any focus into CPUs for PCs.

literally not even close to what will happen

[Animal901]

9 hours ago, Eniqmatic said:

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/moorinsights/2019/12/16/intel-acquires-habana-labs-for-2b

 

Be interesting to see if they can provide some competition within the next few years, competition is always good!

Yeah especially if they don't get blown up in Palestine/Israel.. probably not the best place to make tech.

[justpoet]

1 hour ago, Animal901 said:

Yeah especially if they don't get blown up in Palestine/Israel.. probably not the best place to make tech.

There's a lot of tech startups and R&D centers in Israel, especially around chip making, ai, and audio.

[Animal901]

1 minute ago, justpoet said:

There's a lot of tech startups and R&D centers in Israel, especially around chip making, ai, and audio.

Yeah. Not a good place for any of that.

[mr moose]

3 hours ago, Thomas001 said:

I don't like that Intel is branching out into so many different markets because that might mean they will no longer put any focus into CPUs for PCs.

Whilst I'm not worried about any of it, if I was I would be more concerned about Intel becoming more of a monopoly in all tech spaces, they are not going to just shift focus.

[Eniqmatic]

6 hours ago, Animal901 said:

Yeah especially if they don't get blown up in Palestine/Israel.. probably not the best place to make tech.

 

4 hours ago, justpoet said:

There's a lot of tech startups and R&D centers in Israel, especially around chip making, ai, and audio.

Also there are a lot of security companies based out of Israel, not sure why!

[pas008]

11 hours ago, Thomas001 said:

I don't like that Intel is branching out into so many different markets because that might mean they will no longer put any focus into CPUs for PCs.

thats what their plan is

11 hours ago, Arika S said:

literally not even close to what will happen

 

8 hours ago, mr moose said:

Whilst I'm not worried about any of it, if I was I would be more concerned about Intel becoming more of a monopoly in all tech spaces, they are not going to just shift focus.

 

they want 30% of all silicon tam

 

seems like they arent interested in holding their 90% on just cpus

think its a good thing considering cpu sales are declining

 

https://www.tweaktown.com/news/69157/intel-ceo-bob-swan-interested-holding-90-cpu-market-share/index.html

 

[LeSheen]

9 hours ago, Animal901 said:

Yeah. Not a good place for any of that.

As if it's their fault that America likes to fight all over the globe xD.

 

On a serious note, israel has a lot of well trained computer scientist. Thanks to their mandatory army training that selects on their talent and puts them in a suitable role.

 

A lot of companies are eager to hire them once their service is over.

[LeSheen]

4 hours ago, Eniqmatic said:

Also there are a lot of security companies based out of Israel, not sure why!

I have seen a documentary about this phenomenon. It's because of their mandatory service in the army. They get assigned a fitting role and receive training.

[Eniqmatic]

55 minutes ago, LeSheen said:

I have seen a documentary about this phenomenon. It's because of their mandatory service in the army. They get assigned a fitting role and receive training.

Ah sorry, I mean IT security firms, some of the best come from Israel!

[LeSheen]

5 minutes ago, Eniqmatic said:

Ah sorry, I mean IT security firms, some of the best come from Israel!

I know I mean IT security as well. They get a lot of training in cyberwarfare and security if they have the profile for it.

[Eniqmatic]

Just now, LeSheen said:

I know I mean IT security as well. They get a lot of training in cyberwarfare and security if they have the profile for it.

Oh interesting! Thanks for the insight!

[Animal901]

1 hour ago, LeSheen said:

As if it's their fault that America likes to fight all over the globe xD.

 

On a serious note, israel has a lot of well trained computer scientist. Thanks to their mandatory army training that selects on their talent and puts them in a suitable role.

 

A lot of companies are eager to hire them once their service is over.

Palestine is Palestine.  Not america.

16 minutes ago, Eniqmatic said:

Ah sorry, I mean IT security firms, some of the best come from Israel!

I guess you would have to be if you lived on stolen land.

 

It is unacceptable to have to pay a company with hazard duty. Probably why the new market prices are thru the roof.

[Rolling2405]

9 hours ago, pas008 said:

they want 30% of all silicon tam

 

seems like they arent interested in holding their 90% on just cpus

This is what makes me think they will put less or little focus on PC CPUs.