Intel rolled out the Gaudi 3, an AI chip made with TSMC's 5nm process node, looking to provide an alternative in a market dominated by Nvidia.
According to Intel's press release, Intel introduced the Gaudi 3 AI accelerator, which possesses an average of 50% better inference performance and 40% better power efficiency than the Nvidia H100, all at a significantly lower cost.
Intel said Gaudi 3 promises a 4x increase in AI computing for BF16 and a 1.5x boost in memory bandwidth compared to Gaudi 2, substantially enhancing AI training and inference capabilities for global enterprises aiming to implement generative AI on a large scale.
The Gaudi 3, with design support provided by Alchip, maintains the same architecture as Gaudi 2 but is made with TSMC's 5nm process rather than the 7nm process for the Gaudi 2.
Bloomberg quoted Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger saying that the world needs more suppliers, and Intel is dedicated to providing the choice. Gelsinger did not elaborate on the pricing of Gaudi 3 but said the company would provide an "extremely good" total cost of ownership.
According to Intel, Gaudi 3 will be available to OEMs, including Dell, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Lenovo, and Supermicro, in the second quarter of 2024 and will be widely available in the third quarter.
Intel has unveiled a lineup of customers and partners for its Gaudi accelerator, which includes Bharti Airtel, Bosch, CtrlS, IBM, IFF, Landing AI, Ola, Naver, NielsenIQ, Roboflow, and Seekr. Additionally, Intel has announced plans to collaborate with industry leaders such as SAP, RedHat, VMware, and others to establish an open platform for enterprise AI. This initiative aims to expedite the deployment of secure generative AI systems empowered by retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) technology.
Reuters quoted Jeni Barovian, Intel's vice president for strategy and product management, saying that customers are coming to Intel expecting Intel to deliver solutions that meet their needs.
Intel is betting the Gaudi 3 would help it challenge the market dominated by Nvidia, which controls over 80% of the AI chip market. Meanwhile, major cloud service providers like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are developing their in-house data center chips. According to Intel's corporate filing, its Data Center and AI division reported declining sales for two consecutive years, while its competitors in the data center market, Nvidia and AMD, saw their sales surge.
