ABI Research is tipping the edge AI chipset market to grow from $US2.6b in 2019 to $US7.6b by 2024, driven by the migration of AI workloads — particularly AI inference — to edge devices, on-premise servers, gateways, end devices and sensors.
It says no vendor will command more than 40 percent of the market, although NVIDIA is the frontrunner with a 39 percent revenue share in the first half of 2019.
ABI Research principal analyst Lian Jye Su said the edge AI chipset market was highly competitive. “The use cases become increasingly complex and diverse and new players are emerging from the horizon almost monthly.
“Major key players have a strong heritage in building global scale for their chips, even in hugely fragmented environments. Therefore, it is crucial for the vendors, particularly newcomers, to have a clear value proposition, comprehensive software stack, and strong support from the partner ecosystem and developer community.”
ABI Research has produced a report Edge AI Chipsets: Technology Outlook and Use Cases that explores the edge AI landscape by looking at chipset architectures, their respective computational requirements and use cases.
It profiles the main players in the market, highlighting their key capabilities. A press release on the report focuses on NVIDIA but the analysis offered shines a light on the market in general.
ABI Research says NVIDIA has a strong presence in the key AI verticals leading in AI deployments: automotive, camera systems, robotics and smart manufacturing.
However it is not strong in consumer electronics, specifically smartphones. “In recent years, AI processing in smartphones has been driven by smartphone chipset manufacturers and smartphone vendors, such as Qualcomm, Huawei and Apple, ABI says.
“In smart home applications, MediaTek and Amlogic are making their presence known through the widespread adoption of voice control front ends and smart appliances.”
Generally, the research firm is tipping chipset manufacturers to adopt one of three strategies to capitalise on the AI edge market:
- Create AI chipsets that target the AI-enabled on-premise server and gateway market.
“Supporting enterprise use cases, these servers and gateways generally have high processing capabilities and require flexible AI chipset architecture that can support the ever-changing AI inference and training workloads,” ABI says. - Target intelligent edge devices and nodes
“[This strategy] to a certain extent, favours vendors that are active in the consumer electronics space. Chipset vendors like Qualcomm and MediaTek have natural advantages here.” - Target low-cost and battery-powered end devices that feature minimal computational capabilities and long useful lives.
“These devices are often deployed in smart cities, smart buildings, smart transportation, and utilities, all which rely on public ethernet or Low-Power Wide-Area Networks (LPWANs) for connectivity.” BI Research forecasts shipments for these devices will grow from 0.9 million in 2019 to 5.7 million in 2024, with a CAGR of 45.5 percent.”
