Korean AI startup Rebellion aims to join the world of AI-chip developers for projects like Open AI’s ChatGPT with its new AI chip called Atom. The new chip by Rebellion is an attempt by the startup to compete against US chipmaker Nvidia, which presently dominates the AI chip market.
Rebellion, a fabless (semiconductor design specialist) startup, released an AI (artificial intelligence) semiconductor ‘Atom’ that supports transformer-type deep learning language models such as GPT-3.5 and BERT.
Atom is the first AI semiconductor in Korea to support Transformer-based deep-learning language models. Transformer is a type of deep learning algorithm used by Open AI’s GPT-3.5 and Google’s BERT. Atom is manufactured with Samsung Electronics’ 5-nano EUV process and will be released for data centers.
Korea’s leading telecom company KT backs Rebellion as an investor and as a potential customer. Rebellion drew attention from the fabless (specialized in semiconductor design) industry by releasing the finance-oriented chip AION, which applied TSMC’s 7-nano process. After about a year, it used Samsung Electronics’ leading-edge process to launch a new semiconductor for data sensors.
While developing Atom, Rebellion focused on ‘software optimization’ and ‘responding to global AI trends.’ Kim Hyo-eun, CPO (Chief Product Officer), said, “In an environment similar to when customers use existing GPUs (graphics processing units), we have developed the optimized compiler, firmware, driver, and runtime to enable the service,” he said.
“We are also developing Kubernetes-based system software, a related technology to enable cloud service. It will be applied to the lightweight model of AI service’ trust.’ In addition, the plan is to accelerate business synergies with data centers, etc. The AI trading field, which Rebellion has been targeting from the beginning of its foundation, will achieve more tangible results through mass-produced chips,” Park Seong-hyun, CEO of Rebellion, said, “Significantly, an AI semiconductor capable of supporting transformers such as GPT has been released in Korea. For service, Atom will be the only alternative in Korea.”
