Rebellions’ Atom chip is designed to consume only about 20% of the power of an Nvidia A100 chip. South Korean startup Rebellions has launched a new AI chip called Atom, Reuters reported on Monday. The new chip is an attempt by the startup to compete against US chipmaker Nvidia, which presently dominates the AI chip market. Rebellions aims to provide a domain-specific AI processor along with optimized software. “This approach, together with our unique decentralized programming model, will enable customers to arm with the most powerful yet energy efficient AI hardware as well as seamless software integration,” the company said on its website. Rebellions is backed by one of South Korea’s largest telecom operators KT, who is both an investor as well as a prospective customer for Rebellions. The Atom chip is “designed to excel at running computer vision and chatbot AI applications,” Rebellions co-founder and Chief Executive Park Sunghyun told Reuters. “Because it targets specific tasks rather than doing a wide range, the chip consumes only about 20% of the power of an Nvidia A100 chip on those tasks,” he said. South Korean government pushes chip production Analysts believe Rebellions’ new chip could boost South Korea’s ability to compete in the AI chip domain, currently dominated by Nvidia. “This Atom AI chip by Rebellions will give competition to Nvidia AI chips. AI chips is the fastest growing segment in semiconductors. It is good to have competition in this space,” said Pareekh Jain, CEO at Pareekh Consulting. Thus, “It has a good shot in scaling up and becoming a competitor to Nvidia,” he said. The South Korean government has been trying to strengthen research and development in the AI chip sector with the objective of enhancing its presence in the domestic data center market. The government plans to allocate nearly $800 million in the coming five years, and it is expected that the demand for AI chips will account for one-third of the total demand for chips by 2030. AI chips are used in high compute intensive environment such as cloud, conversational AI, generative AI such as ChatGPT, computer vision, robotics, metaverse, self-driving cars, quantum computing, blockchain, cryptocurrencies, cybersecurity, and payments. However, Jain said one of the biggest challenges in adopting the new technology is cost. “The wide availability of cost-effective AI chips will help in democratizing many of these new technologies,” Jain said. More supply chain options for CIOs and CTOs CIOs and CTOs across sectors need AI chips for compute-intensive workloads. Until now, the choices were limited, with Nvidia commanding a lion’s share of the market. If Rebellions is able to scale up, it can present itself as a good alternative to Nvidia. “Competition is always good for sourcing. As we have seen during the chip shortage, enterprises felt the need to diversify both chip suppliers and geographical regions to avoid supply chain risks and delays,” Jain said. “Rebellions with the South Korean ecosystem can be a good alternative both as a supplier and also as a geographical region,” Jain said. “And if Rebellions comes with attractive pricing and offers equivalent or better performance than Nvidia, it can benefit CIOs even on the cost side.” Related content feature 25 great uses for an old Android device We all love getting new gadgets, but what to do with the old ones? Here are 25 clever ways to put your old Android phone or tablet to good use. By JR Raphael May 17, 2024 25 mins Small and Medium Business Smartphones Tablets feature The mobile, distributed, future of work Michael Covington, Jamf's vice president for product strategy, has some thoughts on the complex changing workplace. By Jonny Evans May 16, 2024 8 mins iMac Remote Work Apple news analysis The brilliant Android breakthrough you didn’t hear about at Google I/O This Android innovation has nothing to do with Android 15, Gemini, or anything connected to AI. But it may be the most exciting and potential-packed news coming out of Google all week. By JR Raphael May 16, 2024 10 mins Chromebooks Laptops Google news Visa leverages AI to help retailers access more customer data Payment tokenization removed customers’ personal information from the payment data flow; now Visa is asking them to put it back in. By Prasanth Aby Thomas May 16, 2024 3 mins Payment Systems Data Privacy Generative AI Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe