At its Innovation developer’s conference last month, Intel chief executive officer (CEO) Pat Gelsinger highlighted how what he calls the “siliconomy” is being fuelled by artificial intelligence (AI), and how the combination of silicon and software in Intel platforms serves users and developers.
“As these advances as semiconductors enable new levels of human achievement, this need for compute and capabilities is exponentially increasing,” he said. “And Moore’s Law in a nutshell, as we’re increasing transistors, compute and capabilities, we’re decreasing, at an exponential rate, size, cost and power. This is the magic of silicon.
“We’re just seeing everything become a computer, more plentiful, powerful, affordable processing. And these computers are now becoming part of your thermostat, your picture frames, everything is becoming smart, and AI is representing a generational shift in how computing is used and giving rise to the siliconomy.”
His first announcement was of the general availability of Intel Developer Cloud, a subscription service which lets developers build and test applications on high-powered – and even pre-production – hardware, granting access to Intel Gaudi 2 accelerators, 4th generation Xeon processors, the CPU Max series, and Intel’s data centre GPUs. It also includes Intel’s suite of software for AI, deep learning, high performance computing, rendering, and more.
“Developers are the ones running this global economy. And you’re powered by Moore’s law,” Gelsinger observed. “And it requires a range of different capabilities, next generation CPUs and GPUs, GPUs, chiplets, new interconnect, specialized accelerators, and our commitment to you is to give you the coolest hardware and software ASAP.”
Dec. 14 will be a red-letter day for Intel, he revealed. That’s the day when the long-delayed Meteor Lake chips, to be known commercially as Intel Core Ultra – the company’s first using chiplets for its components (chiplets are Lego-like building blocks that are assembled to create a single package that is what we think of as a chip), its first with a dedicated AI coprocessor (the NPU, or Neural Processing Unit), and its first built on the Intel 4 process node – will finally be released.
On the same day, the 5th generation Xeon processors, known as Emerald Rapids, will also launch.
“We’re just working to bring AI capabilities into every platform, every product that we build, from our highest end, right all the way down to our client offerings. … Simply put, our roadmap is extremely robust, and we are executing aggressively to bring this together,” Gelsinger said. “And of course, that execution is based on Moore’s law. And as Gordon said in his eponymous law, nothing can go on forever, no physical quantity can change exponentially forever, but it can be delayed.
“We at Intel, we see ourself as the stewards of Moore’s law, and this relentless pursuit of computing and efficiency at scale. And we will not rest, we are committed to continuing this pursuit, and, as I like to say, until every element to the periodic table is exhausted, we ain’t done.”