Artificial-Intelligence integrated circuits: Comparison of GPU, FPGA and ASIC

Abstract

In the recent years, the boom in technology industries has been greatly accelerated by the development of artificial intelligence (AI). AI, which is based on machine learning (ML), can only be developed rapidly because of the continuously increasing computational capacity of AI processors. Compared to general-purpose processors (GPPs), AI processors have specially designed architectures to accelerate the operations of AI applications, such as convolution, matrix, and massive parallel computing. The objectives of this paper are: (1) to illustrate the differences between general-purpose processors and AI processors; (2) to summarise the characteristic three mainstream AI processors: GPU, FPGA and ASIC, and draw a comparison among them. It shows that GPUs provide very competitive performance with high power consumption; FPGAs can offer high efficiency at low cost; and AISCs provide the highest performance with the lowest power consumption, but cost the most.