Rebellions Inc’s ATOM chip could be seen as the country’s attempt to challenge Nvidia Corp, the US chip designer, which is also the global leader in the sector
Rebellions Inc, the South Korean startup introduces its new AI chip in what could be deemed as a perfect time as the government takes up new contracts and the country gears up to put forward the local firms in the booming AI sector. AI is currently the star of the tech world because of ChatGPT, a much-discussed chatbot created by Open AI that answers the queries of users and even goes to the length of generating essays and poems.
ChatGPT has also broken records as the fastest-growing app just two months after its launch. Rebellion Inc’s ATOM chip could be seen as the country’s attempt to challenge Nvidia Corp, the US chip designer, which is also the global leader in the sector, reports Reuters. Nvidia is a leader in making upscale AI chips and comprises 85% of the world’s six biggest cloud services as of December, according to analysts.
ATOM
ATOM was designed by Rebellions and is manufactured by Samsung Electronics Co. In order to serve the global demand and the sudden curiosity over ChatGPT, Rebellion Inc’s ATOM is also designed to surpass AI applications similar to chatbots and run computer vision and it does not do training. The ATOM chip when compared to the Nvidia A100, uses only 20% of power as it targets specific tasks rather than focusing on performing a wide range of functions, says Park Sunghyun chief executive and co-founder of Rebellions Inc.
The South Korean Dream
The government wants to encourage domestic industry and has already invested millions over the course of the next five years. The government also plans to develop and research in an attempt to increase the market share of the country’s AI chip market in domestic data centers to at least 80% by the year 2030. The A100 is one of the popular chips that are capable of performing AI workloads and is potent enough to create AI models.
South Korean government is giving priority to AI chip manufacturing to provide a more centric approach while countries like China, France, the United States, and Germany support their semiconductor firms as a whole. The country is advancing its industry goals and will be putting out a notice for a neural processing unit, two data centers where only domestic chipmakers are allowed to bid, reports Reuters.
Officials aim on creating a market space that would become a hub for AI chipmakers, enabling global competition, especially when South Korean firms supply half of the world’s memory chips. Without ample support from the government, the companies like Nvidia will become the first choice of consumers.
Rebellions will participate in the government project in association with the Korean cloud, telecom, and data center operator giant, KT Corp with intention of discouraging Nvidia consumers from US suppliers. Firms such as Furiosa AI and Korea
Development Bank is also planning to bid according to reports along with Sapeon Korea Inc, which also plans to participate in the project. One major drawback these firms face when competing with Nvidia is that these are comparatively new and will take up some time to build momentum compared to Nvidia, which is well-established. The government push and incentives would improve the market shares within Korea. Rebellions have raised nearly $95 million which also includes 30 billion won from KT. The firm also received a 10 billion grant from the South Korean government
