IBM's New AI Chip Prototype NorthPole Achieves Major Leap in Speed and Efficiency

IBM's new AI chip prototype, called NorthPole, achieves major improvements in speed and energy efficiency over current chips. It is 22x faster and 25x more energy efficient on a relevant benchmark.

NorthPole works by integrating memory onto the chip itself, avoiding the von Neumann bottleneck that causes latency in current chips.

On the ResNet50 benchmark, NorthPole significantly outperformed all other architectures. ResNet50 tests computer vision abilities like image classification.

NorthPole's efficiency could enable powerful AI at the edge for applications like self-driving cars, robotics, and more.

IBM is already working on the next version of NorthPole. This prototype is seen as just the start of the new architecture's potential.