All the way to "buy, buy, buy," how did Intel pave the way for artificial intelligence?
Lei Feng Network (search "Lei Feng Network" public concern) September 6, 2016 news, Intel announced today that it will acquire computer vision startup Movidius. The latter is dedicated to the development of low-power computer vision chips. In recent years, its Myraid 2 chip has in-depth cooperation with Google, DJI, and Lenovo in product and R&D. Industry insiders commented that in recent years, Intel's layout of artificial intelligence has always been a "buy, buy, and buy."
1. Computer Vision Startups Movidius
In September 2016, Movidius CEO Remi El-Ouazzane announced on the blog that the company will continue its original mission of giving visual capabilities to the machine and will also cooperate deeply with Intel's RealSense technology.
Previously, this eight-year-old company has launched multiple rounds of financing through investment agencies such as Summit Bridge Capital, Capital-E, Defengjie, and Emertec Gestion, with a total financing of 86.5 million US dollars. Movidius' Myriad 2 series graphics processors have been used by Lenovo to develop next-generation virtual reality products. Google also reached an agreement with the company to deploy a neural computing engine on the platform to advance the machine learning capabilities of mobile devices.
2. AI startup company Nervana
In August 2016, Intel took the AI ​​startup company Nervana into the bag, mainly to enhance Intel's AI capabilities.
Since its establishment two years ago, Nervana has focused on semiconductor, software and AI deep learning technologies. Earlier, it had received a $25 million investment, and its source of funding was mainly a series of well-known venture capital companies such as DFJ, Data Collective, Fuel Capital, Lux Capital, and Allen & Co.
Intel's Xeon processor dominates data, but it has not yet begun to use AI for data analysis. Teaming up with Nervana will help Intel gain a firm foothold in the currently relatively limited market and avoid potential competitors such as Nvidia.
Diane Bryant, director of Intel Data Center, mentioned in the blog, "We will use Nervana's expertise to further optimize the Intel Math Kernel Library."
3. Computer Vision Inc. Itseez
In May 2016, according to the "Wall Street Journal" online edition, Intel announced that it will acquire Itseez, a Russian company specializing in computer vision technology development. Intel is currently strengthening its technology reserves for use in automobiles and other new markets.
Itseez was founded in 2005 and is a privately held company. Itseez stated that the company has developed software and services for driver assistance systems to help warn of possible collisions, increase driver awareness and simplify driving. Intel claims that Itseez's technology has been used in other products such as security systems.
"This acquisition further strengthens Intel's efforts to win the IoT market for automobiles and video. The ability to sense and understand images electronically will lay the foundation for future innovation and market opportunities," said Douglas, senior vice president of IoT operations at Intel. Davis said in the blog post.
4. Yogitech, a manufacturer of semiconductor functional security solutions
In April 2016, Intel announced the acquisition of Yogitech, an Italian semiconductor functional security solution provider, to strengthen the security protection capabilities of IoT devices and self-driving cars.
Yogitech was established in 2000 as an integrated circuit functional safety analysis solution provider. The company's flagship patented product faultRobust provides analysis methodology and tools to assist in the integration of circuit design to ensure product stability, safety, and availability. Customers include semiconductor companies, system integrators, and others such as Infineon.
Intel said that the acquisition of Yogitech will help to enter the market for IoT systems including ADAS, robots and automation machines.
5. Semiconductor manufacturer Altera
In December 2015, Intel completed the acquisition of Altera, a programmable logic device manufacturer, and incorporated Altera's FPGAs into Intel's product line. The acquisition cost 16.7 billion U.S. dollars, which is Intel's largest acquisition so far.
FPGA is a kind of inter-application chip and general-purpose chip. It has certain programmability and can perform data parallel and task parallel computing at the same time. FPGAs have lower power consumption than GPUs and CPUs in specific areas such as image recognition and signal processing, and are very cost-effective.
This is an important strategy for Intel's layout of machine learning. Intel will encapsulate FPGAs and Intel processors into a single chip. When FPGAs are used to compute machine learning tasks such as image recognition algorithms, these algorithms can greatly improve its performance.
6. Artificial intelligence company Saffron Technology
In October 2015, Intel acquired Saffron Technology, an artificial intelligence company. Saffron was founded in 1999 by Manuel Aparicio, the former chief scientist of the IBM Knowledge Management and Smart Agent Center. Gayle Sheppard, the former general manager of PeopleSoft Software, is in charge of operations. Over the years, the company has been deeply rooted in the enterprise software industry and has sold off some of its edge software operations, such as a system device that can predict the explosion of roadside mines. Saffron's technology aims to extract useful information from large data sets through algorithms that mimic the way the human brain works. But the difference is that the company focuses on developing its own "associative memory" technology, rather than deep learning artificial intelligence such as Google and Facebook.
7. Invest in big data software company Cloudera, which accounts for more than 18% of shares
In April 2014, Intel invested in Cloudera, a big data software company, for US$740 million.
Cloudera is a US-based software company that provides enterprise customers with Apache Hadoop-based software, support, services, and training.
8. Natural language processing startup Indisys
In September 2013, Intel acquired Indisys, a Spanish natural language recognition startup. Indisys was founded in 2003 and is a developer of natural language recognition technology. It also develops smart assistant interfaces like Siri. Its dialogue-based system has web and mobile versions, Spanish department stores, Manfred Insurance, and Bilbao Vizcaya Bank are customers of the company. Although the company’s main customers are all Spanish, this company also conducts multilingual development. The company claims that its smart assistant can speak fluently on multiple platforms and people in multiple languages.
9. Hadoop Consulting Company Xtremeinsights
In June 2013, Intel acquired Xtremeinsights. According to Intel’s official description, this company focuses on Hadoop deployment and machine learning.
10. Somatosensory Recognition Company Omek Interactive
In July 2013, Intel acquired Israeli company Omek Interactive, whose products are mainly gesture recognition and tracking. Omek's technology is somatosensory recognition, which supports near-distance and long-distance tracking of human motion and supports whole body motion tracking as close as 10 centimeters. Intel said that Omek will help strengthen its strength in the field of perceptual computing. It is also Omek that lays the foundation for today's intelligence-based intelligence product, Realsense.
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