A report by Bloomberg suggests Apple is turning their chip-making ambitions towards to development of silicon that will take the AI load away from the CPU. This is in keeping with their strategy of offloading tasks from the CPU in iOS and watchOS devices. And it suggests their purchase of Intrinisity in 2010 is part of a long game..
While Apple was an early entrant to the AI game with Siri, they have been caught and overtaken by Google, Amazon and Microsoft. But the Bloomberg report suggests Apple is developing a new chip called the Apple Neural Engine. It will offload AI tasks from the CPU resulting in fast performance and better power efficiency.
New silicon takes time to develop so it’s doubtful we’ll see the Apple Neural Engine in this year’s 10th anniversary iPhone, which is expected to be significantly different to the iPhone 7. But after writing about Apple for over a decade the only thing I know is that predicting Apple’s next move is about as easy as picking next week’s lotto numbers.
But, I’d not be surprised to see the Apple Neural Engine pop up in a new router that integrated with HomeKit before it was added to other computing platforms.
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