Written by Wallace Witkowski
Chipmaker shows generative AI features on PC with WiFi turned off, but stock ends down 4.3%
Intel shares led the Dow Jones Index lower on Tuesday as concerns about data center stocks overshadowed announcements of new computer chips with artificial intelligence capabilities just in time for the holidays.
Intel (INTC) shares, which were down about 1% as CEO Pat Gelsinger began his keynote at the 2023 Intel Innovation Developers Conference, began to decline as the session progressed, finishing up 4.3% at $36.34, beating the Dow Jones Industrial Average. DJIA stock was the worst performer on Tuesday. Intel shares rose 0.5% after hours.
In the keynote, Gelsinger said Intel will launch its Core Ultra processors — or the company’s long-awaited “Meteor Lake” chip — which use Intel’s first integrated neural processing unit designed to provide “energy-efficient AI acceleration and local inference.” On PC.” Intel will also release fifth-generation Intel Xeon server processors, both of which will become available on December 14.
Intel said the new chips will allow on-device AI reasoning without the need for an Internet connection, while keeping user data local to the computer. “Inference” in AI is where a machine learning model takes the data it already has to make predictions, or create a new response, based on a user’s request.
In generative AI models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, any data a user enters into the model automatically becomes part of the model and is stored on cloud servers — as Samsung Electronics Co. discovered. (KR:005930) earlier this year when proprietary engineers entered data into ChatGPT.
As the AI craze has grown over the past year, Intel has had to draw attention away from rival chipmakers that were largely considered the first and second beneficiaries of the AI wave: Nvidia Corp. (NVDA) and Advanced Micro Devices Corporation (AMD), respectively.
Later in the day, Intel CFO David Zinsner told analysts that although Intel has seen improvements in data center demand over the past two quarters, the company still has a few more quarters to go before we’re in a good place for inventory. “.
“But I think we’re set up to see a good year, next year,” Zinsner said, adding that inventory “will work its way through the back half of the year.”
“We’re going to have that kind of volatility, or what we’re seeing now, or an air pocket at work,” Zinsner said. “I think that will go away by the time we get out of 2023, and 2024 should be a really good year for the data center business.”
Earlier this month, Zinsner said one of the big surprises of the year was better-than-expected data center sales at Intel, after a quarter in which the chipmaker reported its biggest quarterly loss ever.
Last June, a Wall Street analyst was championing Intel’s “physical AI opportunity.” Once again, Intel stock was also the worst stock on the Dow for two days in a row in June, as the company made news about its foundry services.
Read: Intel Gets a Surprise in the Data Center as It Eyes ‘Meaningful’ AI Growth Next Year
Gelsinger said AI has allowed the $574 billion chip industry to fuel the estimated $8 trillion “silicon economy,” which he described as “a growing economy thanks to the magic of silicon and software.”
In a demonstration of Intel’s native AI chip during Gelsinger’s keynote, Rewind.ai co-founder Dan Siroker joined the Intel CEO on stage, turned off WiFi on a demo laptop, and demonstrated that Rewind.ai He was able to answer questions in plain English about what data was “seen” during the laptop session while it was offline.
Rewind.ai bills itself as a personal AI service that stores private data on the user’s local device without using cloud storage and without capturing private browsing data.
Rewind.ai announced Tuesday that it now runs on Intel-based Macs and will soon be available on Microsoft Corp.’s (MSFT) Windows operating system. Before that, it only supported Apple Inc.’s (AAPL) M1 and M2 chipsets and iPhones. According to Rewind.ai, the service uses about 20% to 40% of a single core, or about 1% to 5% of the capacity of an M1 or M2.
Rewind.ai reportedly secured a $12 million funding round from venture capital firm NEA earlier this year, valuing the startup at $350 million, compared to a $75 million valuation obtained through the seed funding round. By Andreessen Horowitz a year ago.
Intel also announced that it is building a large AI supercomputer using Gaudi 2 accelerators with generative AI company Stability AI as the lead customer.
Read: Arm IPO: 5 things to know about the central chip designer in the AI transition
Gelsinger also noted that chip designer Arm Holdings (ARM) now supports Intel’s open source inference platform OpenVino. Arm began trading on the Nasdaq last week. Gelsinger was a former principal engineer at Intel, where he helped pioneer Intel’s complex instruction set computing (CISC) architecture for its x86 CPUs. At the same time, Arm was a pioneer in manufacturing reduced instruction set computing (RISC) chips.
CISC chips are designed with high performance and throughput in mind, so they require a lot of power and generate a lot of heat. RISC chips, on the other hand, are designed to boost mobile phone performance, with an emphasis on power efficiency to extend battery life.
While the Dow Jones finished down 0.3%, the PHLX Semiconductor Index (SOX) fell 1%, and the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite COMP fell 0.2%.
-Wallace Witkowski
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09-23-19 1859ET
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