British startup Graphcore is taking on semiconductor titan Nvidia with a new computer chip designed specifically for running cutting-edge artificial intelligence algorithms.
Graphcore, which is based in the English city of Bristol, unveiled a new computer chip Wednesday that packs a remarkable 59.4 billion transistors and almost 1,500 processing units into a single silicon wafer.
The company said that in benchmark tests, its chips — which are sold in a set of four designed to work together — performed up to 16-times faster than those from Nvidia.
Nvidia's chips, which were originally designed to handle the intensive computing work needed for computer graphics, are currently the market leaders for machine-learning applications.
"Nvidia is the 200-pound gorilla but we see ourselves as the main challenger," Nigel Toon, Graphcore's chief executive, said.
Among those trying out Graphcore's new technology are J.P. Morgan Chase, Oxford University, and the U.S. Laurence Berkeley National Laboratory. Another is Atos, the French supercomputing vendor that is helping a number of European research labs access the new chips.
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