How ‘AI at the edge’ is creating new semiconductor demand

As more CIOs and CTOs focus attention on selecting the best-fit IT infrastructure for their particular cognitive computing needs, vendors of semiconductor technologies are exploring new ways to optimize their investment in solutions at the edge of enterprise networks.Revenue from the sale of artificial intelligence (AI) chipsets for edge inference and inference training will grow at 65% and 137% respectively between 2018 and 2023, according to the latest worldwide market study by ABI Research.During 2018, shipment revenues from edge AI processing reached $1.3 billion, and by 2023 this figure is forecast to reach $23 billion. While it's a massive increase, that doesn’t necessarily favor current market leaders Intel and NVIDIA. According to the ABI assessment, there will be intense vendor competition to capture this revenue between established players and several prominent startup players."Companies are looking to the edge because it allows them to perform AI inference without transferring their data. The act of transferring data is inherently costly and in business-critical use cases where latency and accuracy are key, and constant connectivity is lacking, applications can’t be fulfilled," said Jack Vernon, industry analyst at ABI Research.