“Just think of all the sectors wanting such AI acceleration, from transportation to ntech, medicine to education,” Prof. Cheng said. “It represents a massive opportunity for research, business, and social impact, penetrating di erent market segments and product applications, and involving hundreds of millions of units.” The global market for AI was estimated at US$ . billion in and forecast to increase to over US$ billion by 6.1 Another of ACCESS’s innovative aspects is its bid to o er an alternative to the current business model for AI chip design, enabling a greater number of companies to obtain chips tailored more precisely to their speci c needs. “I think the center will put Hong Kong on the global map in this area. You have great customers, great technology, and the next stage is to tie this together with the AI hardware” While giants such as Apple, Tesla, and drone-maker DJI can a ord to employ large teams to design customized chips for their own devices (and sole use), such resources are beyond most companies. Firms requiring chips for AI products instead pass their algorithms and speci cations to chip-design companies. However, the functions provided by the latter are o en designed for a wide range of applications rather than optimized for a certain AI application and algorithm. This means client companies may only use a part of the purchased chip’s functionality Cover Story 14 IN FOCUS and potential performance, resulting in mismatch, wasted resources, and ine ciency. It also makes it harder for companies to di erentiate themselves from their competitors’ AI products. ACCESS, on the other hand, has set out to devise open- source methodologies and tools for design automation, which enables AI customization to be rapidly carried out by relatively few designers, speeding up design productivity and time to market. “Our goal is to produce customized chips with a small team within a short period of time. Instead of years, it can be done in one to two quarters. Instead of hundreds of people being required to design these chips, it will involve a team of tens of people,” Prof. Cheng said. A media conference introducing ACCESS and its work in November 2021 attracted substantial interest. 1 https://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/1056044/ arti cial_intelligence_ai_global_market
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