The AI revolution is accelerating innovation at a pace that most industries have not seen in decades. New AI-based apps and services are rapidly transforming workflows and business plans for small startups, global corporations, and everyone in between. Many decision-makers see the benefits of preparing for an AI-infused future, but it can be a challenge to know how to equip their teams for success. Much of the discussion surrounding AI-capable systems focuses on purpose-built GPUs and cloud-based platforms that support AI model training and inferencing functions. While those tools may benefit certain AI workflow components, they can also introduce considerable costs and raise concerns about privacy and security.
Businesses may be able to mitigate these concerns—and still get good performance--by moving common AI development tasks to on-site workstations and funneling the work through CPUs. CPU-only AI workstations can be a cost-effective alternative for many parts of the AI development process, and Intel has developed new hardware and software optimized for these kinds of tasks.
We performed proof-of-concept testing to determine whether Intel processor-based workstations provide a suitable environment for completing data-intensive AI projects while running only on CPU cores. We created three representative AI development workflows and measured the time it took to execute each workflow on tower workstations and mobile workstations from three vendors. Although each test system contained a GPU, we made sure that the test workflows did not use it, and all the compute power our tasks required came from CPU cores.
For each of the workflows we executed, the Intel processor-powered workstations delivered strong performance without using their GPUs. Our results indicate that these workstations can be good, cost-effective choices for CPU-intensive AI development tasks like the ones we tested.
For more details on our Intel-based workstation AI proof-of-concept testing, check out the report, infographic, and Q&A brief below.
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