Startup Preps Big Data Processor

Rick Merritt, EETimes
12/18/2015 10:21 AM EST

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Nervana Systems is on the cusp of rolling out a microprocessor designed for big data analytics. The startup’s work is one of a handful of efforts aiming to accelerate deep neural networks in hardware for a variety of recognition tasks.

Engineers are racing to develop and accelerate algorithms that find patterns in today’s flood of digital data. Nervana believes it has an edge with a novel processor it hopes to have up and running in its own cloud service late next year.

Nervana competes with giants such as Intel and Nvidia whose processors run most of today’s algorithms for training neural nets. Web giants are also in the hunt, snapping up the best researchers in machine learning. Among the leaders, Google is said to be working on an accelerator chip of its own.

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