You can find Part 1 here: Part 1
One of the first corrections is that AI chips, true AI chips, don’t need to be 8 nanometers or less. Sure, “AI” assumes some pretty heavy computations and the smaller the nanometer forged onto the chip the “better”. This however doesn’t make a chip AI. What makes a chip and AI chip is the presence of AI Accelerators.
This is confusing to newbs like myself because a lot of the nomenclature for AI and chip design/manufacture is very much brand specific. Meaning, one manufacturer will call their AI Accelerator one thing, and another something different.
For instance: DLP (Deep Learning Processor), NPU (Neural Processing Unit), and AI Accelerator are all interchangeable. Google, for example, calls there DLP/NPU/AIA a TPU… Tensor Processing Unit. So you see the issue.
Next on the list is deconflicting Machine Learning and AI. This is semantics, but still important. An AI chip or AI model is doing AI stuff. So what is AI stuff? It’s mimicking human neural processes. Mimicking in design and execution. Machine Learning can also mimic human neural processes and when it does, it is also AI. But the basic concept of machine learning does not require this “AI stuff”. Where AI does.
Number three… Ukraine needs AI chips to run its last mile small drone operations. No. This could possibly be done with a Raspberry Pi. The key here is can the processor handle Inferences against the model? To do this the trained AI models can be “shrunk” to be just the info it needs for the task. In this case, a chip with AI Accelerators might not be needed.
Bonus… one of the biggest hurdles to deploying AI in Ukraine isn’t the chip. It’s not the model. Its frame rate. Frame rate, or frames per second (FPS), is the number of images captured or displayed in one second of video. Generally for antonymous drones to work you need a higher frame rate. Each image produced must be analyzed, near instantly. Not enough frames? Not enough data. Too many frames? Too much data to process. There is a sweet spot.
Look for more updates in the future as I explore this topic. THANKS!