Qualcomm aims for a spot in the AI data center with new chips

Driving the news: Qualcomm announced two chips: the AI200, due out next year; and a follow-up chip — AI250 — due the following year, with what Qualcomm promises is a ground-breaking new memory architecture.

• "It improves the memory bandwidth by a factor of more than 10," Qualcomm senior vice president Durga Malladi said in a briefing with reporters.
• While Qualcomm typically delivers only chips to customers, here it has also designed a rack-level system designed to plug directly into a data center.

Of note: Saudi AI company Humain will be the first customer for the new chips, with plans to bring on 200 megawatts of compute starting in 2026.

Between the lines: Qualcomm is talking up the energy efficiency of its chips, saying that they will be cheaper over the long term.

• Earlier this year, the company touted a study showing AI compute on devices running its mobile chips dramatically decreased power consumption.

Flashback: It's not Qualcomm's first effort to crack into the data center.

• In 2017 Qualcomm launched it's Centriq family of ARM-based processors but failed to make a significant dent in Intel's market share.
• It announced the the following year it would exit the data center market as part of a broader cost-cutting effort.