Nervana Systems
Company type | Subsidiary of Intel |
---|---|
Industry | Artificial intelligence |
Founded | 2014 |
Headquarters | San Diego, California, U.S. and Palo Alto, California, U.S. |
Number of employees | 48 (2016) |
Website | nervanasys |
Nervana Systems is an artificial intelligence software company based in San Diego, California, and Palo Alto, California.[1] The company provides a full-stack software-as-a-service platform called Nervana Cloud that enables businesses to develop custom deep learning software.[2] On August 9, 2016, it was acquired by Intel, for an estimated $408 million.[3][4]
Deep learning framework
The company's (now discontinued) open source deep learning framework is called neon.[5] Neon – which the company says outperforms rival frameworks such as Caffe, Theano, Torch, and TensorFlow[5] – achieves its performance advantage through assembler-level optimization, multi-GPU support, and use of an algorithm called Winograd for computing convolutions, which are common mathematical operations in the deep learning process.[6]
Nervana Cloud
Nervana Cloud,[7] announced in February 2016, is based on Neon, and runs on Nvidia Titan X GPUs today, but Nervana is developing a custom application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) called the Nervana Engine that is optimized for deep learning and that Nervana says will perform 10x better than Nvidia Maxwell architecture GPUs.[8] The Nervana Engine will achieve greater compute density by implementing only those design elements that are necessary to support deep learning algorithms and ignoring legacy elements specific to graphics processing.[9]
History
Nervana was founded in 2014 by CEO Naveen Rao, CTO Amir Khosrowshahi (Dara Khosrowshahi's cousin[10]), and VP Algorithms Arjun Bansal.[11] Nervana has raised $28 million in funding.[1] In June 2015, Nervana raised $20.5 million in series A funding led by Data Collective with participation from Allen & Company, AME Cloud Ventures, Playground Global, the CME Group, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Fuel Capital, Lux Capital, and Omidyar Network.[12] It was estimated to have only 48 employees when it was acquired by Intel in 2016.[3] In January 2020, Intel shut down the development of Nervana in favor of its acquisition of Habana Labs.[13]
References
- ^ a b "Nervana Systems Puts Deep Learning AI in the Cloud". IEEE Spectrum: Technology, Engineering, and Science News. Retrieved 2016-06-22.
- ^ "Nervana Systems Brings Deep Learning to the Masses". Fortune. 2016-02-29. Retrieved 2016-06-22.
- ^ a b Ina Fried (August 9, 2016). "Intel is paying more than $400 million to buy deep-learning startup Nervana Systems". Recode. Retrieved August 12, 2016.
- ^ Jordan Novet (August 9, 2016). "Intel acquires deep learning startup Nervana for more than $350 million". Venture Beat.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: url-status (link) - ^ a b "Nervana open-sources its deep-learning software, says it outperforms Facebook, Nvidia tools". VentureBeat. Retrieved 2016-06-22.
- ^ ""Not so fast, FFT": Winograd - Nervana". Nervana. 2016-03-03. Retrieved 2016-06-22.
- ^ "Nervana's cloud platform makes deep learning more widely available". Retrieved 2016-06-24.
- ^ "Nervana Engine delivers deep learning at ludicrous speed! - Nervana". Nervana. 2016-05-18. Retrieved 2016-06-22.
- ^ Patterson, Steven Max. "Startup Nervana joins Google in building hardware tailored for neural networks". Network World. Retrieved 2016-06-22.
- ^ Hackett, Robert (November 17, 2017). "Uber's CEO Comes From What May Be the World's Most Techie Family". Fortune.
- ^ "Deep Learning at Scale: Q&A with Naveen Rao, Nervana Systems". re-work.co. Retrieved 2016-06-22.
- ^ "Deep learning startup Nervana raises $20.5M". VentureBeat. Retrieved 2016-06-22.
- ^ "Nervana Nevermore: Intel Shifts Focus to Habana Labs, Cancels NNP-T, NNP-I - ExtremeTech". www.extremetech.com. Retrieved 2020-03-30.