‘ETRI’ will introduce AI semiconductor ‘AB9’ at ‘CES 2021’

On January 11, the Korea Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) announced that they will introduce ‘AB9’, an AI semiconductor developed by ETRI’s researchers to the global IT home appliance exhibition “CES 2021.”

AB9's "AB" stands for Aldebaran and is known as the name given by researchers who participated in the development of semiconductors, hoping that Korean semiconductors AB9 will shine brightly like the first star, Aldebaran Star.

According to ETRI, the AB9's computational speed is 40TFLOPS (Terraplops) that can process data 40 trillion times per second, and its average power consumption is 15W (Watt).

Compared to 300W’s power consumption when N’s chips processes data at 31.4TFLOPS speed, AB9 is up to 25 times faster but power consumption is 20 times smaller.

AI semiconductor, dealing with huge amount of data processing needs to immense power consumption as well as excellent computation because of a power efficiency problem and a need to minimize heat generation.

There is a possibility that the chip may stop working or it may destroy itself by huge heat generation from power consumption in AI semiconductor of autonomous vehicles or drones.

ETRI evaluated AI semiconductor of autonomous vehicles needs to limit power consumption up to 10W for stable driving.

For now, it is not capable of 30TFLOPS of computation while consuming 300W of power for semiconductor in autonomous vehicles. That is the reason why the development of new AI semiconductors such as AB9 is required.

Research Team succeeded in developing AB9 by focusing research core on optimization design such as maximizing efficiency by determining the size of memory and the number of parallel computations. 

AB9 chip is implemented using the 28nm process technology with a chip area of 17mm * 23mm, the size of 1 500 won coin and compare to commercial GPU costs 8 million won ~ 10 million won, AB9 is available for a mere hundreds of thousands of won which is remarkable price competitiveness.

ETRI research team is also planning to develop AI semiconductors that are capable of 120TF of computation within 3 years.

SKT unveiled artificial intelligence (AI) chip named ‘SAPEON X220’.

SK Telecom(SKT) unveiled artificial intelligence (AI) chip named “SAPEON X220’ on 2020 Nov 28.

Serial computing of CPU was generally used in universal computer but for dealing with massive AI data, process large amount of data in parallel is better than serial computing of CPU.

ince GPU was not specialized for parallel computation, it has a limitation to deal with massive data related AI.

Eventually, NPU (neural network processing unit) which is specialized in parallel computation was developed to deal with massive data for AI.

SAPEON X220 based on NPU is highly praised for performance compare to current GPU.

SKT explained SAPEON X220’s deep learning computation speed is 6.7 kilo-frames per second, which is 1.5 times faster than GPU.  At the same time, it uses 20 percent less power than GPU by consuming 60 watts of energy.

In 2018, SKT already applied AIX to ADT Caps’s video monitoring service named ‘T Veiw’, AI Service NUGU and so on and it is planning to replace AIX with SAPEON X220.

SAPEON X220 which is specialized in AI computation is expected to improve ADT Caps’s monitoring service T Veiw’s ability to monitor intruders and SKT is planning to gradually expand the scope of application of SAPEON X220.

Especially, Since SKT plans to foster a semiconductor ecosystem with domestic small and medium-sized companies such as "ASICLAND" and "KTNF," it needs more attention and support.

Korean government supports the development of AI semiconductors.

On January 12, the Ministry of Science and ICT(MSIT) announced it will invest 125.3 billion won this year, up 75% from last year, to support the 13 projects for the advancement of artificial intelligence semiconductor leading countries.

MSIT is planning to support all steps of development from original technology, commercial application to demonstration.

First of all, Regarding the development of original technology, Ministry is planning to invest 1trillion 9.6billion won in NPU development over the next 10 years, including 488 billion won in MSIT and 521.6billion in MTI(Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy) and to develop PIM semiconductors using DRAM process in south Korea.

Secondly, as for the development of commercial application technology, MSIT will support technology transfer and manpower of universities and research institutes with patents so that design companies can commercialize their products early, and promotes new support projects such as system SW advancement to strengthen competitiveness in the software sector, which is relatively vulnerable.

Lastly, in the demonstration step, AI semiconductor technology and products developed in Korea will introduce to public data center and digital new deal project to create early market demand and 2.8 billion won will go into the 2 projects in 2021 for AI semiconductor demonstration support. 

MSIT said they will fully support not only to develop AI technology but also to foster AI semiconductor innovation companies through customized support and create an ecosystem of related industries including training core human resources.

Since the areas where AI can be applied in the future are a wide, demands for specialized semiconductors such as NPUs will increase significantly rather than GPUs.

In this demand outlook, Domestic research institutes and companies such as ETRI and SKT are focusing their capabilities on securing AI semiconductor technologies and the Korean government is also fully aware of the importance of  and willing to support it.