Intel has released the second iteration of AI Playground, an app it debuted this summer as “a user-friendly AI starter app” designed to simplify artificial intelligence on Intel AI PCs. This latest version works with the new line of Intel Core Ultra 200V series processors, designed for AI under the codename Lunar Lake. The idea is to help those using Intel PCs get comfortable using AI functionality without any special account, or even an Internet connection. Intel also launched two new artificial intelligence chips, the Xeon 6 CPU and Gaudi 3 AI accelerator.

Once downloaded, the AI Playground app runs locally. Its “LLM Picker” is prepopulated, offering a choice between Phi3, Qwen2 or Mistral models.

Users can also run their own native PyTorch LLMs if they’re compatible with Transformer versions 4.39 (though Intel qualifies that some of those models may have issues with the IPEX-LLM 2.1.0 PyTorch library used in AI Playground).

To run AI Playground, “you must have one of the following chips on your laptop or desktop PC: an Intel Core Ultra 200V CPU, an Intel Core Ultra H processor, or any Intel Arc discrete GPU with at least 8GB of VRAM,” Tom’s Hardware writes.

In a backgrounder, Intel says that, among other things, Playground can:

• Create: Simply and easily generate images from text using SD1.5 or SDXL models. Just type in the prompt and hit generate.
• Enhance: Take your images to the next level by upscaling them, with or without variation; stylizing them based on another image; inpainting to fix, remove, or change an image; or outpainting to generate an image beyond its original borders.
• Answer: Your own chatbot is at your fingertips. Get answers to any generalized knowledge across art, science, and history. Translate copy from one language or another or get assistance on creative writing or coding.

Aimed at enterprise, the Xeon 6 and Gaudi 3 chips chips are “cost-effective and available for rapid development,” Intel explains in a news announcement. “The new Xeon 6 processors have performance cores (P-cores) that can double AI vision performance and the Gaudi 3 AI accelerators have 20 percent more throughput,” VentureBeat reports.

The pair “come at a time when Intel is trying to prove it has what it takes to be a major player in the AI space,” according to Yahoo, which says Intel is aiming at improved data center market share as it competes with rivals Nvidia and AMD.

“The Gaudi 3 processor, on the other hand, is purpose-built for generative AI applications and will compete directly with Nvidia’s H100 and AMD’s MI300X line of chips,” Yahoo adds. IBM had previously announced that IBM Cloud will be using Gaudi 3 chips.

The Wall Street Journal reported last month that Qualcomm initiated talks with Intel about a takeover. Bloomberg followed with news that Apollo Global Management was exploring a multibillion-dollar investment in Intel.

Related:
Intel Moves to Spin Out Foundry Business, Inks AI Chip Deal with AWS, TechCrunch, 9/16/24
Intel Arrow Lake Is Right Around the Corner, Digital Trends, 10/2/24
First Intel Lunar Lake Laptop Test Shows Almost 24-Hour Battery Life, ExtremeTech, 9/24/24
Asus Zenbook S14 Review: A Showpiece for Intel’s Lunar Lake AI PC Chips, Engadget, 9/30/24