Unique-S.Korea goals to hitch AI race as startup Rebellions launches new chip

By Jane Lanhee Lee and Joyce Lee

SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korean startup Rebellions Inc launches a man-made intelligence (AI) chip on Monday, racing to win authorities contracts as Seoul seeks a spot for native corporations within the exploding AI trade.

The corporate’s ATOM chip is the newest Korean try to problem world chief Nvidia Corp within the {hardware} that powers the doubtless revolutionary AI expertise.

AI is the discuss of the tech world, as ChatGPT – a chatbot from Microsoft-backed OpenAI that generates articles, essays, jokes and even poetry – has change into the fastest-growing client app in historical past simply two months after launch, in line with UBS.

Nvidia, a U.S. chip designer, has a commanding share of high-end AI chips, making up about 86% of the computing energy of the world’s six largest cloud companies as of December, in line with Jefferies chip analyst Mark Lipacis.

The South Korean authorities desires to foster a home trade, investing greater than $800 million over the subsequent 5 years for analysis and improvement in a bid to raise the market share of Korean AI chips in home information centres from primarily zero to 80% by 2030.

“It’s onerous to catch as much as Nvidia, which is to date forward in general-purpose AI chips,” mentioned Kim Yang-Paeng, senior researcher on the Korea Institute for Industrial Economics and Commerce. “Nevertheless it’s not set in stone as a result of AI chips can perform totally different capabilities and there aren’t set boundaries or metrics.”

Rebellions’ ATOM is designed to excel at working laptop imaginative and prescient and chatbot AI functions. As a result of it targets particular duties somewhat than doing a variety, the chip consumes solely about 20% of the ability of an Nvidia A100 chip on these duties, mentioned Rebellions co-founder and chief government Park Sunghyun.

A100 is the preferred chip for AI workloads, highly effective sufficient to create – in trade lingo, “prepare” – the AI fashions. ATOM, designed by Rebellions and manufactured by Korean big Samsung Electronics Co, doesn’t do coaching.

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Whereas international locations similar to Taiwan, China, France, Germany and the US have in depth plans to help their semiconductor corporations, the South Korean authorities is uncommon in singling out AI chips for a concentrated push.

Seoul will put out a discover this month for 2 information centres, referred to as neural processing unit farms, with solely home chipmakers allowed to bid, an official on the Ministry of Science and ICT advised Reuters.

‘TWISTING ARMS’

In a rustic whose corporations provide half the world’s reminiscence chips, the authorities wish to create a market that may be a check mattress for AI chipmakers, aiming to foster world opponents.

“The federal government is twisting the arm of the information centres and telling them, ‘Hey, use these chips’,” Rebellions’ Park, a former Morgan Stanley engineer, advised Reuters.

With out such help, he mentioned, information centres and their clients would possible follow Nvidia chips.

Sapeon Korea Inc additionally plans to take part within the venture, the SK Telecom Co subsidiary mentioned.

FuriosaAI, backed by South Korea’s high search engine Naver Corp and state-run Korea Growth Financial institution, advised Reuters it would additionally bid.

“There’s a variety of momentum behind Nvidia’s developments. These startups have gotten to construct momentum, so that may take time,” mentioned Alan Priestley, an analyst at IT analysis agency Gartner. “However authorities incentives similar to what’s occurring in Korea may nicely have an effect on the market share inside Korea.”

Rebellions will search to take part within the authorities venture in a consortium with KT Corp, a giant Korean telecom, cloud and information centre operator, within the hopes of weaning Nvidia clients off the U.S. provider.

“Amid excessive dependence on overseas GPUs (graphics processing models) globally, the cooperation between KT and Rebellions will permit us to have an ‘AI full stack’ that encompasses software program and {hardware} primarily based on home expertise,” mentioned KT vp Bae Han-chul.

Rebellions declined to present a forecast for its AI chip enterprise. It has raised 122 billion gained ($96 million), together with 30 billion gained from KT in a funding spherical joined by Singapore’s Temasek Pavilion Capital and 10 billion gained grant from the South Korean authorities.

(Reporting By Jane Lanhee Lee in Oakland, Calif., and Joyce Lee in Seoul; Modifying by Miyoung Kim and William Mallard)