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The Six Five with Patrick Moorhead and Daniel Newman


Feb 25, 2020

In the latest episode of The Six Five, Daniel Newman and Patrick Moorhead welcome Lisa Spelman, VP and GM of Intel Xeon Processors and Memory. Early in the conversation, Lisa makes the important point that while many people still think of processors when they think of Intel, this company is doing much more than that. In fact, lately Intel has been focusing a lot on different, improved ways to move, store, and process data using everything from AI and 5G to edge computing and the cloud in general.

 

More specifically, Lisa explained how AI is driving disruptive innovation across the data centric landscape in multiple ways. She mentioned that Intel professionals don’t see AI as a singular workload, but as a pervasive element that will be part of every workload, consumer and business alike. This disruption includes a huge transformation of enterprise workloads, as over 75% of applications are expected to integrate AI in the next 2 years. And at Intel, they see the AI opportunity exceeding $24 billion by 2024!

 

As you might imagine, multiple types of compute will be necessary in the near future. Lisa explained that Intel offers the four key types of compute that analysts agree will usher in the next era of AI: CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, and domain-specific architectures like Intel® Movidius™ VPUs and forthcoming Intel Habana ASICs. Combined with its decades of software expertise, the resources Intel has are among the most substantial in the industry. After all, its strategy has a foundation of Xeon with built-in AI acceleration. And with Deep Learning Boost, the 2nd Gen Xeon Scalable is using INT8 adoption in inference applications to drive a 14x improvement in less than 2 years.

 

Basically, Intel is extending its unique server processor leadership for built-in AI acceleration with upcoming 3rd-Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors with the integration of new extensions for Intel DL Boost called Bfloat16. This will increase deep learning training performance by up to 60% compared to the previous processor generation. And Intel just recently took another step in bolstering its position in AI by acquiring Habana.

 

Another topic of discussion for Lisa was 5G technology, which has been accelerating to market lately. She’s seen investment in 5G RAN far outpace what was projected under a year ago, which is good because it’s definitely ground-breaking new technology that is raising the ceiling in data creation and delivery. Of course, many of the new services enabled by 5G will require redistribution of data processing, and readying all the infrastructure from the data center to the core network to the edge is also required to unlock 5G’s full potential.

 

But so far, Intel has been collaborating with the world’s 5G leaders to design the world’s first standard, high-volume silicon foundation for radio access networks! The company even just announced the Intel Atom P5900, which was designed for 5G’s high-bandwidth, low-latency capabilities and combines compute, connectivity and acceleration technologies into a single SOC package. And it’s not stopping there, as Intel is also delivering a platform foundation that includes custom silicon solutions, from FPAGs to ASICs. This enables 5G infrastructure built to the customers’ desired TTM, cost, power, volume, performance and flexibility.

 

Lisa went on to explain Intel’s work on the edge, as well. In fact, she mentioned that one of the largest growth drivers is at the edge, as it complements the increase in data creation and consumption at the endpoints due to the bandwidth and latencies offered by 5G. Capacity is shifting to the edge due to latency, bandwidth, security, and connectivity. Of course, edge computing comes with some challenges, such as bringing services to it, activating intelligence and automation in the network, and enabling virtualized networks. But Intel is intent on offering a range of solutions that pair HW (Atom, Xeon, FPGA, accelerators, memory, and connectivity) with edge-targeted open source SW, such as OpenVINO, OpenNESS, Open Visual Cloud.

 

And that brings us to the last topic of conversation here, the cloud. In particular, Lisa stated that the foundation of growth is rooted in cloud computing. Built on IA and Intel innovation, such as Intel VT, the cloud is now fueling the modernization of on prem enterprise data centers. Lisa and her team at Intel have seen a trend that’s worth noting, which is the impact of digital services toward the growth of cloud. For instance, there’s been definite growth in digital consumer services, like retail (e-commerce), advertising, and media content. And they’re mostly being driven in two ways. One is the continued digitization of those consumer services, and the other is the continued user engagement in those services and platforms. But the wide-spanning diversity of those services requires a solutions approach to gain a performance advantage.

 

If you want to know more about how Intel is continually improving how to handle data, head to the website to learn about its latest advancements with 5G and other technologies discussed here. And be sure to check out the next episode of The Six Five to keep hearing our analysis on the tech industry’s biggest stories!