Intel gets ready to ‘play offense’ with Habana Gaudi 2 deep learning processor, launching in May 2022
We also have the first-ever picture of the Intel HL 2080 AI chip based on the Gaudi 2 platform: While we did not receive any additional information on the Gaudi 2 HL 2080 chip, we can see that ith as 6 HBM dies. If these are of the HBM2 type, this is a total of 48 GB memory onboard. If it is the HBM3 type, then the sky is the limit and it could be 96 GB (or more). We can also see the soldering pads for a total of 24 VRMs for what appears to be a 12+12 phase design. This is roughly 50% more power than the older Habana chip which had a 8+8 design for a total of 16 VRMs. Assuming these are standard HBM sized chips, it also looks like Intel has increased the die size by 50% over the last generation of Gaudi processors. I am not going to do a die-size estimation here and will leave that to my colleagues to inevitably do. To get a good idea of the rough transistor count increase, however, we also need to know the process the chip is built on. We know that the Intel Gaudi 2 HL 2080 chip is built on ‘a’ 7nm process based on this interview by Eitan Medina, COO of Habana Labs. Unfortunately, this doesn’t really help us much because 7nm could be referring to the N7 process on TSMC, Intel 7 (formerly Intel 10nm), or Intel 4 (formerly Intel 7nm and the least likely). The original Habana Gaudi processors were built on the 16nm TSMC process which makes it more likely for this chip to be on N7 or Intel 7. Whatever the case is, considering the Gaudi 2 platform is clearly on a far smaller node than 16nm (which in itself gives a density increase of roughly 50%), and combined with the die size increase, we are looking at an absolute beast of a processor which should easily go toe to toe with NVIDIA’s upcoming Hopper datacenter GPU - in terms of performance per dollar - and maybe even in terms of absolute performance. Intel’s CEO Pat Gelsinger has previously hinted at a “very aggressive path” for its Habana AI arm: Since being acquired by Intel, Habana Labs would have had a lot more resources to play with and it looks like the company is getting ready to get serious about DL/ML applications. Intel finally has a very real product roadmap that could fend off - and even take marketshare from NVIDIA. via Yahoo Finance
