Cristiano Amon, CEO & President, Qualcomm, on Centre Stage throughout day certainly one of Net Summit 2024 on the MEO Area in Lisbon, Portugal.
Shauna Clinton | Sportsfile | Getty Pictures
Qualcomm on Monday mentioned it plans to launch processors designed for knowledge facilities to energy synthetic intelligence, which can hyperlink to Nvidia’s chips.
Nvidia’s graphics processing items (GPUs) have turn out to be a important part in knowledge facilities used to coach large AI fashions that energy functions like chatbots. They’re usually paired with a central processing unit (CPU) — a market dominated by Intel and AMD.
Qualcomm mentioned it’s planning to launch a customized CPU for the info heart that may connect with Nvidia’s GPUs and software program. A hyperlink to Nvidia’s infrastructure is vital for any participant hoping to crack into the info heart given the relevance of the U.S. chip large’s semiconductors for AI.
The announcement really marks a re-entry into the info heart marketplace for Qualcomm after earlier efforts final decade bore little fruit.
In 2021, Qualcomm acquired Nuvia, which designs processors based mostly on Arm designs and has been key to the U.S. tech titan’s efforts with knowledge heart CPUs.
The info heart CPU market stays extremely aggressive. Massive cloud computing gamers like Amazon and Microsoft already design and deploy their very own customized CPUs. AMD and Intel even have a powerful presence.
Final week, Qualcomm signed a memorandum of understanding with Saudi-based AI frim Humain to develop knowledge facilities, becoming a member of a slew of U.S. tech firms making offers within the area. Humain will function beneath Saudi Arabia’s Public Funding Fund.
Entering into the info heart is a part of a broader technique from Qualcomm to diversify its enterprise, which has historically been dominated by gross sales of processors and modems for smartphones.
Underneath CEO Cristiano Amon, Qualcomm has moved into chips for vehicles as well as PCs — a market traditionally dominated by Intel.
Amon mentioned on Monday throughout at presentation at Computex in Taipei, Taiwan, that there are actually greater than 85 PC designs which can be on sale or in growth with Snapdragon X Sequence chips, which were first announced in 2023. Amon additionally mentioned the corporate will announce a brand new PC chip throughout its annual summit in September.
Qualcomm is pitching its chips as energy environment friendly and able to operating AI processes on a tool, slightly than within the cloud, the place they’re sometimes achieved now. Among the touted benefits of on-device AI embrace sooner AI apps and extra safety, since knowledge does not want to depart a chunk of {hardware}.