IBM, which has been at the forefront of quantum computing and a number of other research fields, recently showcased what it feels the solution to AI processing (and its costs) could be. And if IBM's vision translates into something, the future isn't centered around GPUs: instead, it takes place within mixed-signal, analog chips that could bring about massive improvements in energy efficiency while offering competitive performance against the market's current go-tos.
According to a research paper published in Nature Electronics last week, IBM believes the future of AI inferencing could pass through a chip combining phase-change memory (PCM) alongside digital circuits. According to the paper, matrix-vector multiplication (one of the main workloads for AI inferencing) could be performed directly on chip-stored weights.
