Intel Vision 2022: AI Gaudi2 Chip, Accenture Collaboration And More Products Unveiled

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based chip giant made a series of announcements to coincide with its first in-person event in more than two years.

Intel Corp. on Tuesday announced a slew of products in its silicon, software and services portfolio during its first Vision event in Dallas, Texas.

The company launched its AI Gaudi2 chip, 4th generation Xeon Scalable processors, Project Apollo AI program with Accenture, a new IPU roadmap extending through 2026, a new GPU Solution, and new 12th Gen Core HX processors for hybrid work laptops. The announcements also included an early look at steps Intel is taking to enable service models across its ecosystem.

“We are in the most dynamic global market of our lifetime,” Pat Gelsinger, Intel’s CEO, said in a statement. “The challenges organizations face today are complex and interconnected, and success depends on their ability to quickly adopt and maximize leading-edge technologies and infrastructure… we are excited to share how we are applying our scale, resources and the magic of silicon, software and services to help customers and partners accelerate digital transformations in the complex environment.”

12th Gen Core Line Gets Boost From HX

Dan Rogers, Intel’s senior director of mobile product marketing, told CRN during an interview that the 12th Gen HX chips are an important step in the evolution of mobile workstations aimed at commercial users. “We saw a need for a level of memory and IO and connectivity,” Rogers said. “The professional engineers we work with and demonstrated the product to, folks that may work in the design business, they’re working with incredibly massive data sets. To service that we needed a huge amount of IO. And that’s one of the key distinguishing factors of our HX line versus our H series. If you need the best in terms of IO, in terms of storage, maximum amount of memory and maximum compute, that is what distinguishes the HX.”

Intel completed the 12th Gen Core family with the HX launch, which the company says is created for professionals who need maximum performance and flexibility to navigate a hybrid environment with up to 16 cores and clock speeds up to 5 GHz.

4th Gen Xeon And Accenture AI Collaboration

Intel also announced its 4th Gen Xeon Scalable processor named Sapphire Rapids. Intel says the processors deliver up to 30x performance versus the prior generation through software and hardware optimizations for AI workloads. For telco networks, Xeon can deliver up to two times capcity gains for virtual radio access network (vRAN) deployments.

The company kicked off its project with Accenture called Projecte Apollo, with the goal of making AI more accessible for enterprises with more than 30 open-source AI solutions kits. The first kits will be released in the next few months.

Jason Mitchell, Accenture’s global cloud lead and Intel client account lead, told CRN in an interview that the companies have been doing important collaborations in the AI space. “How those technologies are brought to bear is important to our applied intelligence, artificial intelligence and analytics,” he said. “That’s a significant area of co-investment.”

New IPU And GPU Solutions

Intel released its IPU (Intelligence Processing Unit) roadmap extending through 2026, which will feature new architecture platforms (code-named Hot Springs Canyon) and the Mount Morgan (MMG) ASIC, as well as next generation 800GB products. IPUs are dedicated products with hardened acceleration for infrastructure compute needs, allowing businesses to solve tasks and problems faster.

Intel’s data Center GPU, code-named Artic Sound-M (ATS-M), is the industry’s first discrete GPU with AV1 hardware encoder. Developers will be able to easily design for ATS-M with an open software stack through oneAPI. ATS-M will be available in two form factors and in more than 15 system designs from partners including Dell, Supermicro, Inspur, and H3C. It will launch in the third quarter.