Nervana Systems

Nervana
Subsidiary of Intel
Industry Artificial intelligence
Headquarters San Diego, California, U.S. and Palo Alto, California, U.S.

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 $350 million or more.[3][4]

Deep learning framework

The company’s 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 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, and VP Algorithms Arjun Bansal.[10] 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.[11] It was estimated to have only 48 employees when acquired in 2016.[3]

References

  1. 1 2 "Nervana Systems Puts Deep Learning AI in the Cloud". IEEE Spectrum: Technology, Engineering, and Science News. Retrieved 2016-06-22.
  2. ↑ "Nervana Systems Brings Deep Learning to the Masses". Fortune. 2016-02-29. Retrieved 2016-06-22.
  3. 1 2 Ina Fried (August 9, 2016). "Intel is paying more than $400 million to buy deep-learning startup Nervana Systems". Recode. Retrieved August 12, 2016.
  4. ↑ Jordan Novet (August 9, 2016). "Intel acquires deep learning startup Nervana for more than $350 million". Venture Beat.
  5. 1 2 "Nervana open-sources its deep-learning software, says it outperforms Facebook, Nvidia tools". VentureBeat. Retrieved 2016-06-22.
  6. ↑ ""Not so fast, FFT": Winograd - Nervana". Nervana. 2016-03-03. Retrieved 2016-06-22.
  7. ↑ "Nervana's cloud platform makes deep learning more widely available". Retrieved 2016-06-24.
  8. ↑ "Nervana Engine delivers deep learning at ludicrous speed! - Nervana". Nervana. 2016-05-18. Retrieved 2016-06-22.
  9. ↑ Patterson, Steven Max. "Startup Nervana joins Google in building hardware tailored for neural networks". Network World. Retrieved 2016-06-22.
  10. ↑ "Deep Learning at Scale: Q&A with Naveen Rao, Nervana Systems". re-work.co. Retrieved 2016-06-22.
  11. ↑ "Deep learning startup Nervana raises $20.5M". VentureBeat. Retrieved 2016-06-22.
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