The attention in the chipsets and processors segment has turned to the artificial intelligence or AI handling capabilities. Qualcomm, with its feet firmly planted in the mobile phones space is now making a serious effort at entering the already crowded segment.

Leading the pack are Intel and Nvidia, the former a giant in the chipsets in the PC and laptop segments and the latter more into the gaming consoles space. The technology behind this chipset is being explained as using AI algorithms to perform a few functions. One example cited is like converting audio requests into text-based ones.

The technical name being given to this process is “inference”. It is believed these chipsets have a huge potential in the future.

Qualcomm’s chipset is called the Cloud AI 100 and the company has held an event at San Francisco to make the announcement on this. The chipmaker says they will be testing out the chips later this year with the support of Microsoft and bulk production for the market may begin next year.  

Qualcomm will have to contend with other players like Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud with large interest in the cloud-based businesses. These two giants are also engaged in developing chips in the same genre.

Qualcomm is however confident that the strategy it has adopted in this particular product will help it capture the market more easily. It is explained that based on its unparalleled experience with the mobile phones, Qualcomm can make smaller sized chips that may be useful for data centres that have limited capacities. The company has the technology to make these chipsets with less heating, again, thanks to the millions of chipsets it makes for the mobile devices. So, Qualcomm may target a niche market and not take Intel or Nvidia head on.

But ultimately in the marketplace, it is only actual performance that counts.