Huawei launches new 'AI-ready' smartphone chipset

Описание: (4 Sep 2017) LEADIN:
Chinese communications giant Huawei has unveiled the new chipset for its upcoming flagship smartphone - the Huawei Mate 10, set to debut October 16.
According to Huawei, the Kirin 970 chipset is able to process artificial intelligence (AI) tasks on the device in combination with cloud-based processing, that means reduced latency and improved energy efficiency.
STORYLINE:
At this packed press conference at Berlin's IFA consumer electronics show, the CEO of Huawei's consumer group Richard Yu, is showing off the chipset for its next flagship smartphone.
Huawei says the Kirin 970 chipset, produced by Huawei owned HiSilicon, will be significantly faster and more efficient than the previous Kirin 960 chipset.
According to Yu, the chipset will be up to 25 times faster than its predecessor and up to 50 times more energy efficient.
The chipset will be included in the next Huawei Mate 10 flagship smartphone, which is set to be launched in Munich on October 16.
Huawei claims the speed will not only improve the consumer experience, it will also mean the smartphone will be able to process tasks that have previously only been processed in the cloud.
That means the chipset is artificial intelligence-ready because it can enable something like the Google Assistant on the phone, rather than on the cloud.
"We can really achieve real time, on device, AI processing," says Yu.
For consumers, it could mean a faster response rate when asking Google Assistant a question, it could also mean faster image processing and other AI-related tasks.
But Nicole Scott from website Mobile Geeks says we'll have to wait and see how the chipset actually performs in a device before it can be properly evaluated.
"Artificial Intelligence is the buzzword of 2017 and the fact that Huawei has come out with an artificially intelligent processor feels a lot like a lot of the vapour where we're seeing all around the industry," she says.
"Will it actually be useful? They are going to have to rely on their software partners to develop on it, so we're going to have to wait and see."
The Kirin 970 chipset has 5.5-billion transistors, up from 4-billion in the previous version.
Scott says the power of the chip, combined with on-device AI processing, could make the smartphone feel faster to consumers.
"If we're really going to try to imagine what Huawei is stuffing in to this phone, big data does take a lot of calculation and all of that does happen off the phone," she says.
"So when you ask Alexa questions, Alexa is actually drawing in to a cloud and then feeding information back.
"If some of that can happen on the phone, it would decrease latency times and actually make the phone a lot more intelligent. But we would need to see partners come onboard to actually see results."
Michael Josh Villanueva, editor of GadgetMatch tech news website, says the chip could also possibly be used to learn users' behaviour, adjusting the phone's performance to match.
"A lot of Android smartphones, after a year of using it, it kind of slows down," he says.
"So, I think what they're trying to say is these processors are going to be fast. But to stay fast, they're going to be smarter so that they can figure out how you use your phone and so it will adapt to how you use it, so that even if you use it for a long time, it stays fast. Of course, the proof is in the pudding and we'll find out."
Berlin's IFA consumer electronics show runs until September 6.

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