June 2, 2011 - Nikkei Asia reported on June 31st.SoftBankWorking togetherIntelDeveloping a new AI-specific memorychipIts power consumptionExpected to be significantly lower than current chipsThe company's AI infrastructure is a foundation for building an energy-efficient AI infrastructure in Japan.
The parties plan to design a new type of stacked DRAM chip with a different wiring scheme than the existing high bandwidth memory (HBM).Expected to reduce electricity consumption by about half.
Saimemory, a newly formed company, is responsible for the project, using technology from Intel and patents from the University of Tokyo and other Japanese universities, Saimemory will focus on chip design and patent management, while manufacturing will be handled by an external foundry.
The project aims to complete a prototype within two years and then evaluate whether to put it into mass production, with the aim of commercializing it in the 2020s, with an overall investment estimated at 10 billion yen (note: about 500 million yuan at current exchange rates).
Softbank is the main investor, contributing 3 billion yen (about 150 million yuan at the current exchange rate), while RIKEN and Kinko Seiki are also considering financial or technical participation. The project also plans to apply for government support.
SoftBank hopes to bring this new memoryfor its AI training data centers. As the application of AI in higher-order fields such as enterprise management deepens, the demand for high-performance and high-efficiency data processing capabilities continues to rise, and this chip will be expected to build high-quality data centers at a lower cost.