Report: Intel forms AI alliance to counter Nvidia

Business news | May 2, 2024

By Peter Clarke

Intel has joined up with cloud services provider Naver Corp. and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) to develop an AI R&D partnership, according to Business Korea.

The Naver-Intel-KAIST AI Joint Research Center (NIK AI Research Center) was announced at the KAIST main campus in Daejeon, South Korea., on April 30.

The work within the partnership will be focused on working with the Gaudi series of AI training and inference processors from Intel to raise them up as alternatives to the Nvidia supplied GPUs for AI.

Naver is a South Korean Internet conglomerate that provides search engine and the Line messaging application as well as AI cloud services.

Naver will provide access to its Naver Cloud platform to the KAIST joint research center. Naver Cloud is based on the Gaudi2 processor from Intel. KAIST researchers will utilize Gaudi2 for their studies, publishing research papers annually. In addition, they will share various infrastructure facilities and equipment necessary for joint research, and undertake cooperative activities such as personnel exchanges. The NIK AI Research Center plans to host between 20 and 30 industrial-academic research projects.

The center will be led jointly by KAIST’s Professor Kim Jeong-ho and Lee Dong-Su an expert in AI semiconductor design and AI software from Naver Cloud. It will employ approximately 20 faculty experts and more than 100 master’s and doctoral students will participate as researchers. The center is contracted to operate for three years but this could be extended, the report stated.

Professor Kim Jeong-ho stated: “Through the use of the Gaudi series, KAIST can secure technical know-how in AI development and semiconductor design and operation software development. Particularly, the establishment of this joint research center is highly significant as it enables us to gain experience in operating large-scale AI data centers and to secure the necessary AI computing infrastructure for future research and development.”