Cambricon Technologies, founded by the two brothers Chen Yunqi and Chen Tianshi of the Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Chinese Academy of Sciences) announced the completion of a $100 million Series A financing, initiated by SDIC (A round leader), Ali Baba Venture Capital, Lenovo Venture Capital, Guoke Investment, Zhongke Turing, Yuanhe Origin (Angel Wheel Leader), and Yongzheng Investment (Angel Wheel Investor) jointly invested.
China is working on artificial intelligence chips to narrow the gap with global technology giants.
Artificial Intelligence "Cambrian"
About 600 million years ago, the era was called "Cambrian" in geology, and a large number of invertebrates appeared "life explosions" in a short time. The world's first artificial intelligence processor, developed by the Chen Institute and the Chen Tianshi team of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, named the "Cambrian", also means the era of artificial intelligence is about to usher in a big outbreak.
This round of financing has led to a Cambrian valuation of $1 billion.
According to the introduction on the Cambrian website, the company's 1A chip released last year is the world's first commercial "neural learning" "neural network" processor chip for smartphones, security surveillance, drones, wearables and All kinds of terminal equipment such as intelligent driving, when running mainstream intelligent algorithms, the performance and power consumption ratio exceeds the traditional processor.
Chen Tianshi, CEO of Cambrian Technology, explained: “There are so many applications for deep learning, but they are all based on traditional general-purpose processors such as CPUs or GPUs. For example, an old story a few years ago was that Google spent tens of thousands of CPUs. Training the cat face recognition model. In the future, the neural network that wants to expand to the human brain scale, whether it is CPU or GPU, is not enough to support."
He said that based on historical experience, in the intelligent era, we need a special kind of intelligent processor chip. Chen Tianshi said: "The Cambrian is a processor designed for deep learning of artificial intelligence. It is at least two orders of magnitude better than the traditional processor in the field of image and speech recognition. The integration is also several times that of the traditional processor. It is possible to equip mobile devices with artificial intelligence chips."
For the difference between general-purpose chips and professional chips, Chen Yunxi likes to use the "Swiss Army Knife" and "Chopper" as a metaphor. He believes that the ordinary processor is like the "Swiss Army Knife". Although it is versatile, it is not professional and wastes. However, when cooking, the kitchen knife is handy, and the professional deep learning processor is more efficient and faster. "kitchen knife".
Researcher of the Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chen Yunxi, co-founder of the Cambrian company, said that the Cambrian 1A chip can solve two problems: First, significantly improve the computing power of computer systems in the field of artificial intelligence, which can exceed the traditional central processing. The device and the graphics processor chip are two orders of magnitude; the second is the off-line intelligentization of the terminal product, so that many user data does not have to be uploaded, which ensures information security.
At present, the Cambrian terminal processor IP products have been derived from 1A, 1H and other models. According to Chen Tianshi, the Cambrian A round of financing will be used to promote the productization and marketization of the Cambrian series of processors in the terminal and the cloud. Promote the intelligentization of all kinds of terminal devices and provide high-performance and low-power cloud intelligent processing solutions.
The Cambrian is in the process of bringing chips to market. According to Chen Tianshi, commercialization is mainly two aspects: one is the terminal, and the other is the cloud. The terminal products are mobile phones, smart glasses, bracelets, etc., which require chips to recognize images, videos and text. In the cloud, well-known cloud customers like Keda Xunfei and Shuguang are already Cambrian customers.
How far is Chinese chip distance leading the world?
The average age of members of the Cambrian team is only 25 years old, and many key members have begun to work in related fields during their school days. In the face of the news that China's artificial intelligence chips lead the world, industry insiders hold different views. A researcher from the Chinese University of Science and Technology told the First Financial Reporter: "The Cambrian project is based on the Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the starting point is very high. And the institute has nurtured a company like Lenovo, and a leading company in China's artificial intelligence hardware is also very normal."
The Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences is the first national academic institution specializing in comprehensive research in computer science and technology in China. It is known as the "cradle of China's computer industry." Previously, the Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has successfully developed China's first general-purpose CPU chip "Godson One". Although "Godson One" has been criticized by some insiders, it still makes an important contribution to the development of Chinese chips. "Of course you can't ask it to compete with Intel, but it is still used in some areas." The researcher of the above-mentioned China University of Science and Technology told the First Financial Reporter.
Shengling Hai, vice president of research and chip industry at Gartner, told the First Financial Reporter: "According to the development strategy of the new generation of artificial intelligence in the country, artificial intelligence chips are used in security, military, and video artificial intelligence algorithms, and Just need, the order does not have to worry, as long as the technology is too good, it can completely replace Nvidia's artificial intelligence development board Jetson."
However, a professional from Nvidia told the First Financial reporter: "The Cambrian and NVIDIA chips are not very comparable because it is an integrated circuit (ASIC) designed for specific purposes, just like Google's TPU chip is Designed for Tensor-flow, there are limitations. NVIDIA's GPUs are more scalable, can be programmed according to different application needs, optimized for different algorithms, and can withstand the test of technology upgrades, etc."
"The era of intelligence is coming sooner or later." Chen Yunqi said, "Every time has its core material carrier, such as the steam engine in the industrial age, the general-purpose CPU in the information age, and this core carrier will emerge in the intelligent era."
According to the forecast data of consulting firm TracTIca, by 2025, the market share of deep learning chips related to artificial intelligence will increase from US$500 million last year to US$12.2 billion, with a compound annual growth rate of over 40%.
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