Baidu KUNLUN chip is built on the company’s advanced XPU, a home-grown neural processor architecture for cloud, edge, and AI, as well as Samsung’s 14-nanometer (nm) process technology with its I-Cube (Interposer-Cube) package solution.

The chip offers 512 gigabytes per second (GBps) memory bandwidth and supplies up to 260 Tera operations per second (TOPS) at 150 watts. In addition, the new chip allows Ernie, a pre-training model for natural language processing, to infer three times faster than the conventional GPU/FPGA-accelerating model.

Leveraging the chip’s limit-pushing computing power and power efficiency, Baidu can effectively support a wide variety of functions including large-scale AI workloads, such as search ranking, speech recognition, image processing, natural language processing, autonomous driving, and deep learning platforms like PaddlePaddle.

Through the first foundry cooperation between the two companies, Baidu will provide advanced AI platforms for maximizing AI performance, and Samsung will expand its foundry business into high performance computing (HPC) chips that are designed for cloud and edge computing.

“We are excited to lead the HPC industry together with Samsung Foundry,” said OuYang Jian, Distinguished Architect of Baidu. “Baidu KUNLUN is a very challenging project since it requires not only a high level of reliability and performance at the same time, but is also a compilation of the most advanced technologies in the semiconductor industry. Thanks to Samsung’s state of the art process technologies and competent foundry services, we were able to meet and surpass our goal to offer superior AI user experience. ”

“We are excited to start a new foundry service for Baidu using our 14nm process technology,” said Ryan Lee, vice president of Foundry Marketing at Samsung Electronics. “Baidu KUNLUN is an important milestone for Samsung Foundry as we’re expanding our business area beyond mobile to datacenter applications by developing and mass-producing AI chips. Samsung will provide comprehensive foundry solutions from design support to cutting-edge manufacturing technologies, such as 5LPE, 4LPE, as well as 2.5D packaging.”

As higher performance is required in diverse applications such as AI and HPC, chip integration technology is becoming more and more important. Samsung’s I-Cube technology, which connects a logic chip and high bandwidth memory (HBM) 2 with an interposer, provides higher density/ bandwidth on minimum size by utilizing Samsung’s differentiated solutions.

Compared to previous technology, these solutions maximize product performance with more than 50% improved power/signal integrity. It is anticipated that I-Cube technology will mark a new epoch in the heterogeneous computing market. Samsung is also developing more advanced packaging technologies, such as redistribution layers (RDL) interposer and 4x, 8x HBM integrated package.

2.5D Package Structure

About Baidu

Baidu, Inc. is the leading Chinese language Internet search provider. Baidu aims to make the complicated world simpler through technology. Baidu’s ADSs trade on the NASDAQ Global Select Market under the symbol “BIDU”. Currently, ten ADSs represent one Class A ordinary share.

“The mobile industry is undergoing a dramatic transformation and opening up new ways of business by bringing innovative technologies like 5G, AI and IoT to enterprises,” said DJ Koh, President and CEO of IT & Mobile Communications Division, Samsung Electronics. “We believe open collaboration is central to unlocking these opportunities and look forward to driving digital transformation for our enterprise clients in the 5G era with IBM and Samsung’s mobile devices and connected services.”

Safety Platform Powered by IBM Cloud, AI and 5G

Today’s announcement is designed to bring together IBM’s cloud innovations and Samsung’s Galaxy devices ecosystems, including Galaxy Tabs, Galaxy smartphones, and Galaxy Watches. This is designed to help improve the work environments for police officers, fire fighters and other first responders.

According to the International Labour Organization, nearly 3-million deaths occur each year due to occupational accidents. Governments and enterprises have an increasing need to build systems which track the health vitals of workers in remote or high-stress environments.

Built on the IBM Cloud, the new platform will now allow clients to track a worker’s vitals, including heart rate and physical activity, to determine if that person is in distress and automatically dispatch help.

For example, equipped with Samsung’s Galaxy Watches with biometric sensors and Galaxy smartphones enabled with 5G capability, first responders will have their safety and wellness indicators shared on this platform in real time. The solution constantly tracks their vital signs and other key indicators to instantly alert emergency managers if there is a change in any of these data points, which may indicate the responder may be in danger of a heart attack, heat exhaustion, or any other life-threatening event requiring immediate attention. The platform transmits the data to emergency managers to provide insights for their decision-making.

On this new platform, Samsung’s high-speed Galaxy devices can now be used at scale almost anywhere. These devices can be customized to withstand intense environments, such as those encountered by a soldier in the field, power plant employees working in harsh weather conditions, an emergency worker responding to a disaster or a worker in a mining plant.

Currently being piloted by multiple police forces, this new solution provides real time health and situational awareness insights on first responders to reduce operational risks in the field.

“IBM continues to bring leading cloud and AI capabilities with deep industry expertise to our enterprise clients,” said Martin Schroeter, senior vice president of global markets from IBM. “Together, IBM and Samsung will use the power of IBM Cloud, 5G, AI and edge computing to enable our clients to leverage these advanced technologies to have greater impact on the way people work, shop and protect their health and families.”

Samsung and IBM Pave the Way for Enterprise Innovation with 5G and Edge Computing

Samsung’s fit-for-purpose design approach and IBM Garage Methodology creates an open collaboration, accelerating how the two companies test and launch new business ideas with advanced cloud services. This approach integrates practices grounded in deep industry expertise at global scale through culture change into a single approach and driving enterprise design thinking.

The two companies are also collaborating across multiple industries to bring the power of IBM and Samsung to bear, including financial services, energy and healthcare. In addition, with the digitization of the manufacturing industry, this partnership lays the foundation for the automation of factories to become efficient and productive with advanced network services and 5G.

Developers can access and utilize the technology behind the platform and build further capabilities on top to impact other vertical industries like manufacturing, defense and retail.

About Samsung Developer Conference

SDC brings together thousands of developers and creators to explore today’s tech and visualize what’s possible in the future. The two-day conference will feature exciting keynote announcements, technical sessions and valuable networking time. Plus, Samsung product teams and technology partners will showcase the latest tech advances and tools.

About IBM Cloud

With over $20B in annual cloud revenue, IBM has built a leading enterprise hybrid cloud business. This includes a comprehensive range of as-a-service offerings, software, hardware and professional services that enable IBM to advise, move, build and manage cloud solutions across public, private and on-premises environments. Through its global network of more than 60 cloud data centers across 19 countries and 18 availability zones across 6 regions, IBM public cloud helps enterprises in all industries to meet security, resiliency, performance, and global deployment requirements. Built on an open source, multitenant environment, clients have secured access to an enterprise-grade IaaS and a leading PaaS that provides them with the latest developer capabilities and ready-to-go innovation engines. This includes more than 190 cloud-native APIs, such as AI, blockchain, IoT, serverless and quantum computing, and consistent function all the way to the edge. For more information, visit https://www.ibm.com/cloud/public

One of the most exciting things about the times we live in is the fact that we stand on the precipice of several major technological shifts. What’s more, the individual innovations that make up these seismic changes are not happening independently, but rather are interweaving to inform and empower one another. As we stand here at the edge, no two innovations are enlivening and empowering the tech industry more than those of AI and 5G.

While AI is making technology smarter across the board, 5G is ensuring that connection speeds are fast enough to allow platforms to interface in real-time. So how exactly do AI and 5G work hand-in-hand to make each other, and the entire tech industry, stronger? Dr. Gregory Dudek, Head of the Samsung AI Center in Montreal, extrapolates on the interplay between the two innovations, and how they stand to change things for consumers.

AI for 5G and Beyond

The Montreal AI Center’s primary area of focus is ‘AI-for-5G’, as Dudek explains. “Bringing the strength of AI to bear in order to make use of the full potential of 5G is the key focus of our research in Montreal,” he relates, “The area is a natural fit for our center, since Montreal is one of the world’s hotbeds for AI research, as well as having a telecommunications research community that has a decades-long history.”

Dudek relates that 5G (and beyond 5G) telecommunications systems are very flexible, and can outperform older systems such as 4G, but that extensive configuration is required to take full advantage of them. “In order to exploit 5G networks’ full potential, and make them applicable for a wide range of users, devices and needs, extensive automated reconfigurability is required,” Dudek says, “And that is where AI comes into the picture.”

The impact that AI stands to have on almost every aspect of our lives, and on our technologies as a whole, is immense – there are few areas of the industry that aren’t expected to be revamped by the introduction of artificial intelligence. “Telecommunication systems have been getting steadily more complex since they were first developed,” Dudek says, “In almost all areas of digital communication, complex optimization problems arise and are solved by increasingly sophisticated solutions that I would often call AI.” According to Dudek, the main thing that AI allows devices to do is “adapt to changing conditions”, and this can lead to those devices being optimized in ways that have rarely been seen before. He says that 5G’s “richer protocols and abundance of cells” provide an opportunity to enhance performance with learning-based AI algorithms, and claims that using AI for 5G is likely to prove “more of a fundamental requirement for state-of-the-art performance than just an opportunity.”

5G Underpins the Future

Just as AI can be used to optimize 5G networks, the enhanced performance characteristics of 5G will be important for many key applications of AI in our daily lives.

Dudek outlines that 5G will be an essential component in many of the key applications of AI. Among those applications, Dudek highlights the automotive, edge computing, robotics and medicine sectors, among others.

“One of the clearest needs is in the domain of autonomous cars and delivery vehicles,” he expands, “Efficient coordination of automotive vehicles will depend on the reduced latency that 5G networks offer.”

Dudek also touches on the area of ‘edge computing’, which is additionally set to empower and be empowered by the introduction of 5G. Edge computing means computing that is done very close to data sources, so that relays back and forth from the cloud are minimized. 5G will accelerate communication speeds between ‘the edge’ and the public cloud, while edge computing, in turn, will improve cybersecurity on 5G networks, reduce the burden on the public cloud and lead to savings on storage and processing costs. Eventually, edge computing is expected to prove helpful in realizing AI’s potential because it will allow computation to be distributed across more devices. 5G is also expected to contribute in this area by accommodating a potentially very large number of edge clients and allowing them to do real-time processing with low latency.

Dudek says that robotics will be another important application of 5G, pointing out that areas such as robotic vision, reasoning and action will all depend on the high-quality connectivity it provides. “Many of the most exciting applications of robotics will combine edge computing, sensing, big data in the cloud and interactions between multiple devices,” Dudek reports, “The combination of bandwidth and low-latency will be critical for things like robotic telemedicine solutions as well.”

Touching on other sectors that 5G connectivity is set to empower, Dudek highlights those of medicine (telemedicine, smart diagnostic capabilities and therapeutic technologies), leisure (multiple streams and viewpoints for sports events and rich, multi-person VR), public transportation and factory automation. “In fact,” Dudek concludes, “if we see 5G and AI as a combined package, then there are very few areas of human activity where there will not be some impact.”

Samsung’s Position

The versatility and power of 5G networks will allow for new kinds of connectivity and the emergence of an all-new family of devices. And, as the dual rise of AI and 5G expands capabilities, the degree to which companies and individuals will be able to take advantage of the resulting solutions will depend on their access. That is why Samsung’s position is such a promising one.

“Samsung has successfully exploited successive waves of the most modern and rapidly-changing technologies,” Dudek imparts, “When it comes to these upcoming innovations – not just AI and 5G, but edge computing, multi-device interactions, machine learning, robotics and personalized devices, – a fluid combination of hardware and software will be crucial. The company’s extensive experience in creating individual devices that can talk to one another and have overlapping functions means that Samsung is in an exceptional position to lead this family of emerging technologies.”

Touching on other areas that are expected to change things for consumers, Dudek says that he also expects Samsung to be instrumental in the sphere of robotics, as well as when it comes to innovations regarding original technologies such as AI and 5G. “It cannot be overlooked that robotics is expected to have a huge influence on our lives,” Dudek says, “And, as robotics is a synthesis of AI and mechatronics, this area is very well-matched to Samsung’s strengths as well.”

What AI and 5G Will Bring to Consumers

For most of us, our devices have already become crucial to going through our daily routines, but the dual inception of 5G and AI is set to make our devices even more complementary to our day to day lives.

“In the near term, AI will make our home lives healthier, safer and more fun,” Dudek says, “But AI also has the potential to help people communicate more easily across linguistic and geographic boundaries.”

“A world where 5G-dependent smart devices become woven into our lives is much closer than most people expect,” Dudek continues, “I expect this embedded, interconnected intelligence to start playing a role in our lives in the near future.”

When one considers the entirety of the picture that Dudek paints, it is hard not to start seeing AI and 5G as more of a necessity than a luxury. Asked how he envisions the combined inception of 5G and AI will change our lives, he says “One of my goals as a researcher is to have a positive impact on the world, and to play a role in bringing important new technologies to life.” He also says that he expects the introduction of 5G and AI to progressively take away more and more of the mundane tasks that people deal with day-to-day. “People will expect much more from the objects around them,” he says, “and this will allow them to focus more on the aspects of their lives that they find more rewarding.”