SAN FRANCISCO, April 9 (Reuters) - Intel ( INTC )

detailed a new version of its artificial intelligence chip at

its Vision event on Tuesday that takes aim at Nvidia's ( NVDA )

dominance in semiconductors that power AI.

WHY IT IS IMPORTANT

Tech companies are hunting for an alternative source of the

scarce chips that are needed for AI. Intel ( INTC ) said that its new

Gaudi 3 chip was capable of training a specific large language

models 50% more quickly than Nvidia's ( NVDA ) prior generation H100

processor. It is also capable for computing generative AI

responses, a process called inference, more quickly than the

H100 chips for some of the models Intel ( INTC ) tested.

KEY QUOTE

"Our customers, first and foremost, are asking for choice in

the industry," said Intel ( INTC ) vice president, strategy and product

management Jeni Barovian. "They are coming to us and they are

expecting that Intel ( INTC ), as a computing leader, will follow the

wave of (generative AI) and deliver solutions that meet their

needs. And they are looking for an open approach."

CONTEXT

Intel ( INTC ) and Advanced Micro Devices ( AMD ) have struggled to

produce a compelling bundle of chips and the software necessary

to build AI applications that can become a viable alternative to

Nvidia ( NVDA ). Nvidia ( NVDA ) controlled roughly 83% of the data center chip

market in 2023, with a majority of the remaining 17% share held

by Google's custom tensor processing units (TPUs) that it does

not sell directly.

BY THE NUMBERS

Intel ( INTC ) used Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co's ( TSM )

5nm process to build the chips. Gaudi 3 includes two main

processor chips fused together, and is more than twice as fast

as its predecessor. The chip is designed to be strung together

with thousands of others and when done so can generate an

enormous amount of compute power.

WHAT IS NEXT

The Gaudi 3 chip will be available to server builders such

as Supermicro and Hewlett Packard Enterprise in

the second quarter of this year.

The next generation of Gaudi chips will be code named Falcon

Shores.