c*******9 发帖数: 9032 | 1 运行一个简单的图像识别深度神经网络(不包括学习)需要什么性能的 FPGA。iphone
7 的好像不够吧。
http://www.forbes.com/sites/aarontilley/2016/10/17/iphone-7-fpga-chip-artificial-intelligence/#3ff97d11337d
It’s been more than a month since teardown shops like iFixit and Chipworks
took apart and dissected Apple’s iPhone 7. The biggest surprise remains
Apple’s decision to dual source its LTE modems from both Qualcomm and Intel.
But there was one little chip that has gone mostly unnoticed. Inside the
iPhone 7 is a field-programmable gate array, or FPGA, made by Lattice
Semiconductor, according to Chipworks. An FPGA is a type of processor that
can be reconfigured after it’s been manufactured and installed in a device.
Increasingly, these chips are are used for accelerating machine learning
applications in data centers. This is the first time an FPGA has appeared in
an iPhone.
“It is very unusual and intriguing,” said Kevin Krewell, a principal
analyst at Tirias Research. “Apple is good at committing to final pieces of
silicon. A programmable chip is going to add extra costs to the build of
materials. Not a lot of phones use FPGAs.”
Inside the iPhone 7 (Photo credit: Chipworks)
Inside the iPhone 7 (Photo credit: Chipworks)
Apple is likely thinking ahead. Krewell thinks the FPGA inside the latest
iPhone model could be used for running machine learning algorithms for, say,
some advanced health monitoring feature that Apple hasn’t yet introduced.
It could do additional image processing for unreleased virtual (or augmented
) reality feature. But the FPGA could also be a temporary stopgap solution
that Apple eventually wants to address by adding a dedicated chip in future
iPhones.
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It’s tough to figure out what function the FPGA is serving right now or
whether the iPhone 7 is currently utilizing the chip. Apple certainly didn’
t spend any time talking about it at the iPhone 7′s September launch event.
Because of the reprogrammable nature of the chip, Apple may update the
firmware on the iPhone 7 to change or engage the chip’s function.
The specific Lattice chip Apple is using is the ICE5LP4K, which is designed
for low-power devices like phones. The two big FPGA makers, Altera (now
owned by Intel) and Xilinx, make more intensive FPGAs better suited for data
centers. Such data centers are where FPGAs are starting take off, because
of their ability to accelerate machine learning software. That’s a big
reason why Intel paid $16.7 billion for Altera last year. Intel is eager to
maintain its dominance in data center processors, so it’s starting to pair
its server processors with Altera FPGAs. Microsoft has been investing
heavily in making its own custom FPGAs to boost the artificial intelligence
capabilities in its data centers.
“There’s been explosive interest in FPGAs,” said Krewell.
Apple isn’t the only company to put FPGAs in phones. Samsung’s Galaxy S5
phone from 2014, for example, had a Lattice FPGA. Samsung never revealed how
the chip was being used, and dropped from the Galaxy S6 phone the following
year. So FPGAs inside mobile phones remain a rarity.
With each new iPhone, Apple is embedding more and more artificial
intelligence. The advanced camera capabilities in the iPhone 7, for example,
come from computer-vision algorithms running on a new image signal
processor, an in-house Apple design. The company is trying to differentiate
from rivals like Google, which rely heavily on the cloud — rather than the
device — for access to artificial intelligence. Apple’s argument is that
it’s more secure and private to do some of the computing on the device
instead having to route every piece of data to the cloud. |
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