Qualcomm Inc is betting the future of artificial intelligence (AI) will require more computing power than what the cloud alone can provide.
The world’s largest maker of smartphone processors is transitioning from a communications company into an “intelligent edge computing” firm, Qualcomm senior vice president Alex Katouzian said.
The edge in question is the mobile device that a user taps to access a network or service, and Katouzian used his time headlining one of the major keynote events at the Computex show in Taipei to make the case for how big a market that would be.
Photo: Sam Yeh, AFP
The US company’s chips help smartphones harness AI for everything from processing photographs to detecting malware. In emphasizing the “AI-capable” aspects of their products, Katouzian and his colleagues joined a flurry of companies positioning themselves as beneficiaries of a spike in demand for AI.
The company has shipped 2 billion AI-capable products to date, he said.
“As growth in the number of connected devices and data traffic continues to accelerate and data center costs climb, it simply won’t be possible to send everything to the cloud,” Katouzian said.
Nor will people want to do so when personal information is involved, he added.
Rocketing demand for chips behind AI tools such as Open AI’s ChatGPT is driving shares of chipmaking peer Nvidia Corp to record highs.
In contrast to Nvidia, Qualcomm’s outlook fell well short of estimates on sluggish global demand for mobile devices.
Katouzian sees the inventory glut depleting in the third or fourth quarter of this year.
Some customers have begun increasing orders for smaller components, a leading indicator for an uptick in demand, he said.
The wider enthusiasm for AI has prompted many companies to focus attention on their AI-related services, with more than one executive declaring a new computing era had dawned.
Arm Ltd, for instance, said its technology is enabling many AI applications already taken for granted and it would be fundamental to building the next wave of AI innovations, Arm chief executive officer Rene Haa said in a keynote address at Computex on Monday.
Citing examples from Amazon.com Inc’s Alexa voice assistant and Alphabet Inc’s Google Pixel phones to smart traffic light management and robotic beehive maintenance, Haas made the argument that on-device and small-scale AI processors would all run Arm technology.
He also pointed to Nvidia’s Grace Hopper next-generation architecture for accelerating AI as another example of Arm technology in the AI supply chain.
The company still intends to go public by the end of the year, a spokesperson confirmed on Monday. Arm, in search of a lofty valuation to satisfy parent Softbank Group Corp, is looking to present itself as another avenue for investors to tap into this vein of technology optimism.
“Given the chase for ‘AI stocks’, we think SBG [Softbank Group] may like to present Arm as an ‘AI play,’ although most of its current business is based on designing and licensing semiconductor IP [intellectual property], particularly for mobile devices,” Jefferies analyst Atul Goyal said.
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