Apple Inc. got an early beginning in artificial intelligence (AI) software with the 2011 introduction of Siri, a tool that lets users operate their smartphones with voice commands.
Now the electronics giant is bringing AI to chips.
Apple Inc. is working on a processor devoted particularly to AI-related tasks, in accordance with a person familiar with the matter. The chip, termed internally as the Apple Neural Engine, would make better the way the company’s devices handle tasks that would otherwise require human intelligence -- like facial recognition and speech recognition, claimed the person, who requested anonymity discussing a product that has not been made public. Apple Inc. refused to comment.
Engineers at Apple Inc. are racing to catch their peers at Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc. in the booming field of AI. While Siri gave Apple an early advantage in voice-recognition, competitors have since been more aggressive in deploying AI across their product lines, involving Amazon’s Echo and Google’s Home digital assistants. An AI-enabled processor would assist Cupertino, California-based Apple integrate more advanced capabilities into devices, specifically cars that drive themselves and gadgets that run augmented reality, the technology that superimposes graphics and other information onto a person’s view of the world.
“Two of the places that Apple is betting its future on require AI," claimed Gene Munster, former Apple analyst and co-founder of venture capital firm Loup Ventures. “At the core of augmented reality and self-driving cars is artificial intelligence.”
Improved Performance Apple devices presently manage complex artificial intelligence processes with 2 different chips: the main processor and the graphics chip. The new chip would let Apple offload those tasks onto a dedicated module designed particularly for demanding artificial intelligence processing, permitting Apple Inc. to improve battery performance.
Should Apple Inc. bring the chip out of testing and development, it would follow other semiconductor makers that have already launched dedicated AI chips. Qualcomm Inc.’s latest Snapdragon chip for smartphones has a module for handling artificial intelligence tasks, while Google declared its first chip, called the Tensor Processing Unit (TPU), in the year of 2016. That chip worked in Google’s data centers to power search results and image-recognition. At its I/O conference this year, Google declared a new version that will be available to clients of its cloud business. Nvidia Corp. also sells a similar chip to cloud customers.
The Apple AI chip is developed to make primary improvements to Apple’s hardware over time, and the company plans to instantly integrate the chip into many of its devices, involving the iPhone and iPad, in accordance to the person with knowledge of the matter. Apple has tested prototypes of future iPhones with the chip, the person said, adding that it is unclear if the component will be ready this year.
Apple’s operating systems and software features would integrate with devices that involve the chip. For instance, Apple has considered offloading facial recognition in the photos application, few parts of speech recognition, and the iPhone’s predictive keyboard to the chip, the person said. Apple also plans to offer developer access to the chip so third-party apps can also offload artificial intelligence-related tasks, the person stated.
Developer Conference Apple might select to discuss few of its latest advancements in AI at its annual developer’s conference in June. At the similar conference, Apple plans to launch iOS 11, its new operating system for iPhones and iPads, with an updated user-interface, individuals with knowledge of the matter said last month. The company is also said to discuss updated laptops with faster chips from Intel Corp.
An AI chip would join a growing list of processors that Apple has developed in-house. The company started designing its own main processors for the iPhone and iPad in the year of 2010 with the A4 chip. It has since issued dedicated processors to power the Apple Watch, the motion sensors across its products, the wireless components inside of its AirPods, and the fingerprint scanner in the MacBook Pro. The company has also tested a chip to run the low-power mode on Mac laptops.
In the year of 2015, Bloomberg reported that Apple’s culture of secrecy stymied the iPhone maker’s capability to attract top AI research talent. Since then, Apple has received multiple companies with deep ties to AI, has started issuing papers related to AI research, has joined a key research group and has made hires from the field. In the year of October 2016, Apple hired Russ Salakhutdinov from Carnegie Mellon University as its director of AI research.
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