Apple has developed AI dedicated chip "Apple Neural Engine" to expand automatic driving technology and AR field

Apple is believed to be undertaking the development of dedicated chips that hardwareize artificial intelligence functions, including the sound assistant function "Siri" installed in many Apple products. This chip is expected to reduce battery consumption by power saving of Siri installed in iPhone and others, and it is considered to play a big role also in future strategy that Apple looks forward.

Apple Is Working on a Dedicated Chip to Power AI on Devices - Bloomberg
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-26/apple-said-to-plan-dedicated-chip-to-power-ai-on-devices

According to the content that Apple officials told Bloomburg subject to being anonymous, Apple is undertaking the development of a dedicated chip for AI processing. Apple has developed a new chip called "Apple Neural Engine" in the company code and seems to aim to install higher artificial intelligence functions such as face recognition and voice recognition on the terminal. At the moment, main processor and GPU are using this processing, but it is expected that processing capacity will be improved and low power consumption will be realized by installing dedicated chip separately.

Audio assistant function Siri has been installed in the Apple terminal since 2011. After that, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc. have also recovered the difference from Apple, by developing audio assistant function using AI, Speaker terminals equipped with audio assistant functions such as Amazon's "Amazon Echo" and Google's "Google Home" have been released.

Google's Home Audio Assistant Speaker "Google Home" helps you recognize and help you understand conversations such as "turn on the electricity", "show that video on TV" "play music" - GIGAZINE


Although Apple, who first introduced the voice assistant function, became in a form to worship other companies due to the outstanding voice assistant later on, but by advancing the development of new chips, existing voice It seems that it is aiming to generate terminals exceeding the assistant function and further aim to utilize it for processing function of automatic driving car and extended reality (AR). Gene Munster, a former Apple analyst, says, "AI is required for the two areas Apple is looking for, AR, and AI is essential for the core part of automatic driving technology."

Apple is also expected to announce Siri-based speech recognition terminals at the event "WWDC 2017" to be held in June 2017.

Apple announces Siri-based speech recognition terminal at WWDC 2017 in June 2017 - GIGAZINE