Intel Hala Point unveiled as the world's largest neuromorphic system

Yesterday, Intel made an announcement that could be remembered as one key step in the effort to deliver a piece of hardware capable of beating the human brain in all areas. Carrying the Hala Point codename and using the Intel Loihi 2 processor, this piece of hardware is the world's largest neuromorphic system. It has 1.15 billion neurons, which is roughly the same as an owl's brain. When compared to its predecessor, namely Pohoiki Springs, Hala Point comes with 10 times the neuron amount and up to 12 times better performance.

According to Intel, the new system can handle up to 20 quadrillion operations per second (20 petaops), with an efficiency that exceeds 15 trillion 8-bit operations per second per watt (TOPS/W). The hardware consists of 1,152 Loihi 2 processors packed in a six-rack-unit chassis that is no larger than a microwave oven. Alongside the 1.15 billion neurons also mentioned earlier, 128 billion synapses and 140,544 neuromorphic processing cores are also on the list of technical specs. The maximum power consumed by the Intel Hala Point is 2,600 W. Additionally, there are also more than 2,300 embedded x86 processors used for ancillary computations, but the specifics have not been revealed. The total memory bandwidth is 16 petabytes per second (PB/s), alongside 3.5 PB/s inter-core data transmission and 5 TB/s inter-core bandwidth.

The first location to receive the Hala Point is Sandia National Labs. This pack of advanced AI hardware will be used to solve various scientific problems, including computer architecture-related, device physics, computer science, informatics, and more. Earlier this year, during the Mobile World Congress, Ericsson Research revealed the use of Loihi 2 to optimize its telecom infrastructure efficiency.

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