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Chinese scientists create chip that can perform AI task 3,000 times faster than Nvidia’s A100: study
- The light-based chip can only perform selected tasks at present such as image recognition, but can operate much faster than current products on the market
- China is currently scrambling to catch up with the US in the AI race after being denied access to some key pieces of technology
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Zhang Tongin Beijing
Chinese scientists have produced a chip that is significantly faster and more energy efficient than current high-performance AI chips when it comes to performing some tasks such as image recognition and autonomous driving, according to a new study.
Although the new chip cannot immediately replace those used in devices such as computers or smartphones, it may soon be used in wearable devices, electric cars or smart factories and help boost China’s competitiveness in the mass application of artificial intelligence, researchers wrote in a paper published in the journal Nature.
The country is scrambling to catch up in the AI race with the United States after Washington introduced a series of curbs on China’s access to technology, including advanced chips.
The new chip – known as the All-Analogue Chip Combining Electronics and Light (ACCEL) – is light-based and uses photons, a type of elementary particle, for computing and transmitting information to achieve a faster computing speed.
The idea of a light-based chip is not new, but the chips currently in use rely on electric current for calculation because photons are more challenging to control.
In a laboratory test, the new chip reached a computing speed of 4.6 PFLOPS (peta-floating point operations per second), 3,000 times faster than one of the most widely used commercial AI chips, Nvidia’s A100. The Chinese chip also consumes 4 million times less energy, researchers found.
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