SEOUL, - South Korean AI processor fabless company Sapeon Inc. announced the launch of a new artificial intelligence semiconductor, the X330, designed specifically for data center operations. This announcement was made on Thursday, marking a significant development in the company's AI technology offerings.
According to Yonhap News Agency, the X330 represents a substantial improvement over its predecessor, the X220, which was the company's first AI chip for data centers developed in 2020. The new chip is touted as being four times faster and two times more energy-efficient than the X220. Moreover, compared to the latest AI inference chip from a competitor, the X330 is reportedly two times faster and 1.3 times more energy-efficient, though the competitor's details were not specified.
Sapeon highlighted that the X330 is versatile and supports large language models (LLMs), including transformer-based LLMs, which underpin technologies like ChatGPT. The company plans to begin mass production of the new AI chip in the first half of next year through a seven-nanometer process by Taiwan's TSMC, the world's largest contract chip maker.
Looking to the future, Sapeon aims to introduce intellectual property for self-driving cars and develop an AI neural processing unit (NPU) for edge devices, such as surveillance cameras. The company, initially a joint venture involving SK Telecom, SK hynix, and SK Square, spun off from SK Telecom last year and is now based in Silicon Valley.