Artificial Intelligence - Page 30

TikTok parent company ByteDance will be training its next-generation AI model using Huawei AI chips, according to three people familiar with the matter, reports Reuters.

The outlet said that ByteDance is diversifying its domestic suppliers of chips used for AI and accelerated development of its own since the United States started restricting exports on advanced AI chips -- you know, the world's best are made by NVIDIA and export controls have stopped all high-end NVIDIA chips from entering China. So, ByteDance is side-stepping that, and keeping it all within China by tapping Huawei AI chips.

ByteDance will be tapping Huawei's new Ascend 910B AI chips to train its new large language model (LLM) according to Reuters' sources, who of course, declined to be identified as the plan is confidential (except leaking it to one of the largest news sources on the planet seems to be OK, even for Chinese companies).

The AI chip market, led by NVIDIA, is crucial to the push toward generative AI and the age of AI PCs and AI-powered smart devices. However, with US trade restrictions on AI hardware, China and its tech giants are finding it increasingly challenging to source NVIDIA chips like the H100. This includes companies like ByteDance, Alibaba, and Baidu.

With NVIDIA no longer able to ship its flagship gaming GPU, the GeForce RTX 4090, to the region, there's room for a company like Huawei to step up and develop new AI hardware specifically for the Chinese market. The tech giant has hit the ground running, and its latest AI chip - the Ascend 910C - is currently being tested.

According to a new South China Morning Post report, Huawei is seeding its new Ascend 910C chip to local AI giants currently using NVIDIA's H100 AI GPU. The Ascend 910C is apparently comparable to the H100 regarding raw performance, so it's positioned as an alternative chip for China's AI market.

South Korea is pushing all-in with AI, with South Korean companies pledging to invest a combined 65 trillion won (around $48.9 billion USD) into AI development by 2027 in order to better compete with the global leaders in AI, the presidential office said on Thursday.

The investment plan was announced during an inaugural meeting of the presidential committee on AI, which was launched to create an AI strategy and coordinate AI research and development efforts, said Park Sang-wook, the presidential secretary for science and technology.

In the meeting, he called for collaborate efforts between the South Korean government and private sector for the country to become one of the top three global leaders in AI by 2027. He said: "It is a time when AI determines national capabilities and economic growth, becoming a key factor in the economy and security. The world's major nations are staking everything on securing AI technology and leadership to win the digital supremacy competition".

With powerful GPUs built to run complex AI workloads and new mobile (and desktop) CPUs integrating NPUs into their architecture for generative AI tasks, the PC as we know it is changing. And that change could be here sooner than we think, with research and consulting firm Gartner forecasting that AI PCs will account for 43% of global PC shipments by 2025.

"The debate has moved from speculating which PCs might include AI functionality to the expectation that most PCs will eventually integrate AI NPU capabilities," said Ranjit Atwal, Senior Director Analyst at Gartner. "As a result, NPU will become a standard feature for PC vendors."

This will present a dramatic shift for all consumers buying laptops or PCs, including students, creators, and professionals. Not everyone will jump in and start using Windows' AI features with their new NPU-powered CPU, but all new CPUs will include an NPU and AI hardware as standard.

NVIDIA's issues with its Blackwell AI GPUs have been "addressed" according to tech journalist Tim Culpan on X, with actual GB200 AI server shipments going out to major cloud service providers (CSPs) "earlier than previously-feared delay".

Microsoft is expected to take delivery of one of the largest allocations of NVIDIA's new Blackwell AI GPUs, as well Oracle, AWS, Meta, and others. NVIDIA's new GB200 NVL36 AI servers were originally slated for delivery at the end of this month, while the higher-end (and more expensive) GB200 NVL72 AI servers were scheduled for early November.

Culpan took to his Substack to explain that delays pushed the timeline back to January, but now both NVL36 and NVL72 AI servers will "ship around the first week of December".

SK hynix has announced volume production of its new 12-layer HBM3E memory, with up to 36GB capacities and speeds of 9.6Gbps.

The South Korean memory leader announced it has started mass production of the world's first 12-layer HBM3E memory with 36GB, the largest capacity of existing HBM to date. SK hynix plans to supply mass-produced 12-layer HBM3E memory chips to companies (NVIDIA) within the next 12 months, and only 6 months after launching 8-layer HBM3E to customers for the first time in the industry in March 2024.

SK hynix is the key to the world of AI chips, with NVIDIA using its HBM3 and HBM3E memory inside of its Hopper H100 and H200 AI GPUs, with HBM3E also used in its new Blackwell AI GPUs. SK hynix has been leading the industry with HBM, with its new 12-layer HBM3E memory chips boosted up to 9.6Gbps of bandwidth, the highest memory speed on the market.

Stability AI has just announced that legendary filmmaker, technology innovator, and visual effects pioneer James Cameron has joined its Board of Directors.

Stability AI is the team behind the infamous Stable Diffusion AI model, with Cameron stepping up into the board of Stability AI as a driving force in cutting-edge technology with visionary storytelling, said the AI startup in its press release.

Cameron joining the Stability AI team represents a "represents a significant step forward in Stability AI's mission to transform visual media. Both Cameron and Stability AI operate at the intersection of emerging technology and creativity. Cameron's artist-centric perspective, paired with his business and technical acumen, will support Stability AI in continuing to unlock new opportunities to empower creators to tell stories in ways once unimaginable".

Intel has officially launched its Gaudi 3 AI accelerator, with the new AI chip coming in slower than NVIDIA's dominant H100 and its new HBM3E-fueled H200 AI GPUs, meaning Intel is aiming its Gaudi 3 by pushing that it's cheaper, and has a lower total cost of ownership (TCO).

Inside, the new Intel Gaudi 3 AI accelerator features two chiplets with 64 tensor processor cores (TPCs, 256x256 MAC structure with FP32 accumulators), eight matrix multiplication engines (MMEs, 256-bit wide vector processor), and 96MB of on-die SRAM cache with a 19.2TB/s bandwidth.

Gaudi 3 also features 24 x 200GbE networking interfaces and 14 media engines, with the media engines capable of handling H.265, H.264, and VP9 to support vision processing. Intel's new Gaudi 3 AI accelerator features 128GB of HBM2E memory with up to 3.67TB/sec of memory bandwidth.

Apple has released its new iPhone 16 family of handsets, with the iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Pro, and iPhone 16 Pro Max available across the planet right now... but... where are all those AI features that hte company promised with Apple Intelligence?

The on-device AI functionality that I've even seen advertised on TV, where they've got Bella Ramsey from The Last of Us looking literally useless without her iPhone and Apple Intelligence. The Hollywood actor... acts... as if she hasn't read the script given to her, so she gets a summary of it from Apple Intelligence, like that's meant to make you buy a multi-thousand-dollar new iPhone 16.

Anyway, now there's analyst Mark Gurman talking about the useless AI features in Apple's new iPhone 16 handsets and that some of them won't be fully-baked until 2025, and some of them are radically behind competing AI on the market. Gurman said that Apple has been a "little disingenuous with its marketing" as Apple claimed the iPhone 16 was the first model "built from the ground up for Apple Intelligence".

A modder has created what he calls "The Ultimate Cheating Device" with a regular TI-84 calculator hacked to run ChatGPT, which is perfect for students who want to ninja an AI-powered calculator into the class.

YouTuber ChromaLock uploaded the video that is embedded above, with some hardware modifications applied and the use of some open-source software modified for the TI-84 that he made, allowing the calculator to run ChatGPT. The modder has uploaded the software required onto GitHub, under the TI-32 repository, which is described as "a mod for the TI-84 Plus Silver Edition and TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition calculators to give them Internet access and add other features, like test mode breakout and camera support".

A microcontroller small enough to fit inside of the TI-84 shell with all of its components is the hardest step, after that the software modification is applied. All of the required TI-84 software features require the use of a link port to connect to bulky external devices, so if students were doing that it would be too obvious... but hardware mods + ChatGPT installed? Game changer.