Specialized

computer hardware Computer hardware includes the physical parts of a computer, such as the central processing unit (CPU), random-access memory (RAM), motherboard, computer data storage, graphics card, sound card, and computer case. It includes external devices ...

is often used to execute

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

(AI) programs faster, and with less energy, such as Lisp machines,

neuromorphic engineering Neuromorphic computing is an approach to computing that is inspired by the structure and function of the human brain. A neuromorphic computer/chip is any device that uses physical artificial neurons to do computations. In recent times, the term ...

event camera An event camera, also known as a neuromorphic camera, silicon retina, or dynamic vision sensor, is an imaging sensor that responds to local changes in brightness. Event cameras do not capture images using a shutter as conventional (frame) cam ...

s, and physical neural networks. Since 2017, several consumer grade

CPU A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor, or just processor, is the primary processor in a given computer. Its electronic circuitry executes instructions of a computer program, such as arithmetic, log ...

s and

SoC SOC, SoC, Soc, may refer to: Science and technology * Information security operations center, in an organization, a centralized unit that deals with computer security issues * Selectable output control * Separation of concerns, a program design pr ...

s have on-die NPUs. As of 2023, the market for AI hardware is dominated by

GPU A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed for digital image processing and to accelerate computer graphics, being present either as a discrete video card or embedded on motherboards, mobile phones, personal ...

Lisp machines

Lisp machines were developed in the late 1970s and early 1980s to make Artificial intelligence programs written in the programming language

Lisp Lisp (historically LISP, an abbreviation of "list processing") is a family of programming languages with a long history and a distinctive, fully parenthesized Polish notation#Explanation, prefix notation. Originally specified in the late 1950s, ...

run faster.

Dataflow architecture

Dataflow architecture Dataflow architecture is a dataflow-based computer architecture that directly contrasts the traditional von Neumann architecture or control flow architecture. Dataflow architectures have no program counter, in concept: the executability and ex ...

processors used for AI serve various purposes with varied implementations like the polymorphic dataflow Convolution Engine by Kinara (formerly Deep Vision), structure-driven dataflow by

Hailo Hailo was a British technology platform that matched taxi drivers and passengers through its mobile phone application. Founded in London in 2011, the Hailo taxi service was available in 16 cities (as of December 2013). By May 2013, Hailo had en ...

, and dataflow

scheduling A schedule (, ) or a timetable, as a basic time-management tool, consists of a list of times at which possible tasks, events, or actions are intended to take place, or of a sequence of events in the chronological order in which such things ...

Cerebras Cerebras Systems Inc. is an American artificial intelligence (AI) company with offices in Sunnyvale, San Diego, Toronto, and Bangalore, India. Cerebras builds computer systems for complex AI deep learning applications. History Cerebras was foun ...

Component hardware

AI accelerators

Since the 2010s, advances in computer hardware have led to more efficient methods for training deep neural networks that contain many layers of non-linear hidden units and a very large output layer. By 2019,

graphics processing unit A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed for digital image processing and to accelerate computer graphics, being present either as a discrete video card or embedded on motherboards, mobile phones, personal ...

s (GPUs), often with AI-specific enhancements, had displaced

central processing units A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor, or just processor, is the primary processor in a given computer. Its electronic circuitry executes instructions of a computer program, such as arithmetic, log ...

(CPUs) as the dominant means to train large-scale commercial cloud AI.

OpenAI OpenAI, Inc. is an American artificial intelligence (AI) organization founded in December 2015 and headquartered in San Francisco, California. It aims to develop "safe and beneficial" artificial general intelligence (AGI), which it defines ...

estimated the hardware compute used in the largest deep learning projects from Alex Net (2012) to Alpha Zero (2017), and found a 300,000-fold increase in the amount of compute needed, with a doubling-time trend of 3.4 months.

Sources

{{Reflist Computer hardware Artificial intelligence