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IIRC there's already an FPGA in the iPhone.
by rch 9y ago
IIRC there's already an FPGA in the iPhone.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Retric 9y agoThere is a tiny one in the iPhone 7. But, that's for flexibility on current tasks not future proofing. In terms of AI there is little reason to run it on the phone unless it's heavily used or needs or be low latency. Consider if they add a 100$ of computing power to a phone that sits unused 99% of the time they can just build a server using those same 100$ worth of parts that can then serve 100 phones saving 90+$ per phone including upkeep etc. PS: This is the same logic why Amazon Echo is so cheap, it simply does not need much hardware.
- panic 9y agoPrivacy is another reason to keep the computation local.
- themihai 9y agoI believe that's actually the main reason to choose a "local" AI.
- taneq 9y agoGood luck getting any of the big players to acknowledge that. >.<
- djrogers 9y agoThat's exactly why Apple does things like analyze your photo library locally on the phone - for privacy.
- DannyBee 9y agoYes, surely this has no relation to their inability to build reliable cloud products ....
- mercer 9y agoIt could be both. Perhaps Apple concluded that 1) they're subpar with cloud services and will have difficulty competing, 2) there's a growing need/demand for more privacy and less 'cloud', and 3) Apple's products are already, on the whole, recommended when it comes to privacy. And based on that they figured privacy was a good thing to aim for. Play to their strengths and differentiate based on that.
- dgacmu 9y agoI believe many of them do. Google has TensorFlow Lite: https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/17/googles-tensorflow-lite-brings-machine-learning-to-android-devices/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/05/17/googles-tensorflow-lite-br... Facebook has Cafe2Go. Apple is working on this (and already has bindings optimized to use the ARM vector unit for DNN evaluation). Running on device, if it can be done with reasonable power, is a win for everyone. Better privacy, better latency, and more robust operation in the face of intermittent connectivity.
- djrogers 9y agoYou are correct, but we're talking about an entirely different magnitude of fpga for AI purposes than the tiny little one in the iPhone 7.