Cross-Industry Hardware Specification to Accelerate AI Software Development
September 16, 2022 | IntelEstimated reading time: 1 minute
Arm, Intel and Nvidia have jointly authored a paper describing an 8-bit floating point (FP8) specification and its two variants E5M2 and E4M3 to provide a common interchangeable format that works for both artificial intelligence (AI) training and inference. This cross-industry specification alignment will allow AI models to operate and perform consistently across hardware platforms, accelerating AI software development.
Computational requirements for AI have been growing at an exponential rate. New innovation is required across hardware and software to deliver computational throughput needed to advance AI.
One of the promising areas of research to address this growing compute gap is to reduce the numeric precision requirements for deep learning to improve memory and computational efficiencies. Reduced-precision methods exploit the inherent noise-resilient properties of deep neural networks to improve compute efficiency.
Intel plans to support this format specification across its AI product roadmap for CPUs, GPUs and other AI accelerators, including Habana® Gaudi® deep learning accelerators.
FP8 minimizes deviations from existing IEEE 754 floating point formats with a good balance between hardware and software to leverage existing implementations, accelerate adoption and improve developer productivity.
The guiding principle of this format proposal from Arm, Intel and Nvidia is to leverage conventions, concepts and algorithms built on IEEE standardization. This enables the greatest latitude for future AI innovation while still adhering to current industry conventions.
Suggested Items
Siemens’ Breakthrough Veloce CS Transforms Emulation and Prototyping with Three Novel Products
04/24/2024 | Siemens Digital Industries SoftwareSiemens Digital Industries Software launched the Veloce™ CS hardware-assisted verification and validation system. In a first for the EDA (Electronic Design Automation) industry, Veloce CS incorporates hardware emulation, enterprise prototyping and software prototyping and is built on two highly advanced integrated circuits (ICs) – Siemens’ new, purpose-built Crystal accelerator chip for emulation and the AMD Versal™ Premium VP1902 FPGA adaptive SoC (System-on-a-chip) for enterprise and software prototyping.
Intel Gaudi, Xeon and AI PC Accelerate Meta Llama 3 GenAI Workloads
04/22/2024 | Intel CorporationMeta launched Meta Llama 3, its next-generation large language model (LLM). Effective on launch day, Intel has validated its AI product portfolio for the first Llama 3 8B and 70B models across Intel® Gaudi® accelerators, Intel® Xeon® processors, Intel® Core™ Ultra processors and Intel® Arc™ graphics.
Real Time with... IPC APEX EXPO 2024: Integrating Automation into the North American PCB Market
04/18/2024 | Real Time with...IPC APEX EXPODan Beaulieu introduces James Chien from SAA Symtek Automation Asia and Jason Perry from Technica, who are bringing automation to the North American PCB market. They discuss their expertise in automation, equipment sets, and growing opportunities. The focus is on integrating automation into existing shops, considering hardware, software, and flexibility. They also discuss the challenges of modernizing domestic shops and the potential of expanding automation to other markets.
Mobileye EyeQ6 Lite Launches to Speed ADAS Upgrades Worldwide
04/17/2024 | BUSINESS WIREMobileye announced it has delivered the first production-candidate hardware and software of its new EyeQ™6 Lite system-on-chip to its customers, which will power advanced driver-assistance systems in multiple models launching this year.
Yamaha to Showcase Latest-generation Assembly Equipment and Software Tools at SMTconnect
04/16/2024 | Yamaha Robotics SMT SectionYamaha Robotics SMT Section will team with its distributor ANS Elektronik to showcase innovations for high-speed surface mount assembly at SMTconnect 2024.