Today Huawei has officially unveiled the Kirin 970, the OEM’s new flagship SoC that has built-in AI computing capabilities. While it is normal to fixate on things like the CPU configuration and the GPU setup, Huawei is very keen to promote the Kirin 970 as a mobile AI computing platform.

The AI platform runs on a dedicated Neural Processing Unit (NPU), basically a piece of hardware that is very good at running neural networks. When compared to the 970’s CPU, the NPU delivers up to 25 times the performance with 50 times greater efficiency. In other words the Kirin 970 NPU can perform the same AI computing tasks faster and with less power. For example, using a benchmark image recognition test, the Kirin 970 processes 2,000 images per minute, about 20 times faster than if the CPU had to handle the workload on its own.

When it comes to things like AI computing, and in fact super-computing in general, the key benchmark is the number of floating point operations the processor can perform per second. Huawei claim that the NPU in the Kirin 970 can perform 1.92 TFLOPs (i.e. teraFLOPS) when using 16-bit floating point numbers (i.e. FP16). FP16 and FP8 have become increasingly important in the field of AI as neural networks use decimal numbers as part of the calculation matrices, however these floating point numbers don’t need to be that accurate (i.e. they don’t need to have too many places after the point). This means that FP16 and FP8 are more important than a full blown 32-bit or even 64-bit floating point numbers.

“As we look to the future of smartphones, we’re at the threshold of an exciting new era,” said Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei Consumer Business Group. “Mobile AI = On-Device AI + Cloud AI. Huawei is committed to developing smart devices into intelligent devices by building end-to- end capabilities that support coordinated development of chips, devices, and the cloud. The ultimate goal is to provide a significantly better user experience. The Kirin 970 is the first in a series of new advances that will bring powerful AI features to our devices and take them beyond the competition.”
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To boost 3rd party take-up of the new AI capabilities, Huawei is hoping to position the Kirin 970 as an “open platform for mobile AI”, meaning it is opening up the chipset to developers and partners, allowing them to find new and innovative uses for the AI processing capabilities. To that end the Kirin 970 supports Tensorflow / Tensorflow Lite and Caffe/Caffe2.

Ако имаш предвид онзи интелски стик, по спомени беше само за run-ване на мрежи. За самото натренирване си трябват бая мускули, примерно под формата на парещи скъпи GPU-та.

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По този повод, има ли в БГ някакъв форум където да се обсъжда тази област и въобще Artificial intelligence?