Copyright newsbytesapp
Qualcomm has announced its entry into the artificial intelligence (AI) chip market with two new products, the AI200 and AI250. The move pits the semiconductor giant against NVIDIA and AMD in a high-stakes race for dominance in powering data centers. The new chips will be available in liquid-cooled server racks, which help cloud service providers save on operational costs. Following the announcement of these chips, shares in Qualcomm surged 11% to close at $187.68 on Monday. Qualcomm's new AI200 and AI250 chips will be available in 2026 and 2027, respectively. A rack of these chips will require 160 kilowatts of power, similar to NVIDIA's offerings. The company's chip-based accelerator cards will support a whopping 768GB of memory—more than what NVIDIA and AMD currently offer. This could change the game for cloud service providers looking for cost-effective solutions without compromising on performance. Qualcomm's new AI chips are based on its Hexagon neural processing units (NPUs), which are already used in its smartphone chips. The company plans to sell these new chips and other components separately, giving customers the flexibility to design their own racks if they wish. This modular approach could even make NVIDIA or AMD potential customers for some data center parts.
