The battle for artificial intelligence chips has begun, with apple left and Google to the right

Source：Updated：2017-05-31 10:30:45

According to Mark Gurman of bloomberg, apple is developing a custom chip to handle AI tasks. The personage inside course of study is generally believed that the chip can help the company occupy the important strategic position in the AI market: once apple's plan, the chip will be hard to beat in the terminal AI. 
 
The chip was known inside apple as the apple nerve Engine, according to unnamed sources. However, the source does not specify the target date and schedule of the project. 
 
The chip is said to be able to dramatically improve the performance of apple's devices, such as face recognition and speech recognition. 
 
Why is this chip so important to apple? Let's talk a little bit about that. 
 
Apple controls the entire chip 
 
When apple first announced it was developing ARM chips for its phones, it was not a good idea. But it turns out that apple is a very, very good chip maker. 
 
This is partly because apple has superior hardware and software design capabilities to meet user needs accurately. On the other hand, apple has large enough shipments to significantly reduce costs. 
 
No other company in today's technology industry can do that. Apple has built up a huge smartphone business empire and is likely to replicate that success in device centric AI chips. 
 
In the future, apple will be able to make a big deal on the safety, performance and battery efficiency of the chip. All three are important, and other companies cannot rival apple. After all, apple controls the entire chip. 
 
Terminal AI versus cloud AI 
 
It is understood that apple's competitors mainly deal with AI related tasks in the cloud, such as Google's TPU. While this approach can achieve superior processor performance, it is sacrificed in terms of security and privacy. Amazon and Google's home devices will listen to you, your products and your life, and then send the data to their cloud servers. 
 
Apple has chosen to do the AI task on the local device as much as possible, keeping the information you and your customers have in your hands. It only sends anonymous data to the server, which greatly improves privacy and security. 
 
Apple currently USES the powerful A series of processors and gpus on its devices to handle tasks. The future of powerful special AI chips will allow apple to do more on your device, enhancing its ability to control the user's privacy. 
 
Apple can also use the AI chip to make your device more energy-efficient. It has already taken steps such as closing the device when it is not used, even if it sits idle for a microsecond. Customized apple chips can strengthen the control and decide when to use which components, as well as what kind of processor to complete the corresponding task, further reduce the power consumption of the equipment. 
 
Let the long line catch the big fish 
 
In AI, apple has been taking the "long line" strategy, as the slow layout gives amazon's Alexa a foothold. But as apple develops a dedicated AI chip, it will quickly build up a huge competitive advantage in AI. 
 
Of course, apple's neural engine may be dead, too. After all, it's always used to chopping down programs for a variety of reasons.