SK doubles down on carbon cut with new AI chip, car navigation this year

[Photo by SK Telecom Co.]

SK Telecom, the flagship unit of SK Group, will exhibit its new AI chip as its joins the global race in power-efficient microprocessors specialized for deep machine learning during the world’s largest electronics trade show CES 2022 this week to show off the groupwide commitment to carbon reduction.

SK Telecom said on Monday it will display SAPEON, its self-developed AI chip, during this year’s CES to be held on Jan. 5-8 in Las Vegas.

SAPEON is a non-memory chip capable of executing large-scale calculations necessary for artificial intelligence services at high speed and low power. Until now, AI chips, mostly NVIDIA Graphics Processing Units (GPU), have met deep learning demand, but GPUs have been blamed for consuming too much power. Power efficiency becomes the key challenge in digital age as high-performance computer programming requires enormous electricity, which is incongruous to the global efforts to reduce carbon emission.

In a research paper published by the University of Massachusetts in June 2019, about 284 tons of carbon was emitted in the training process of a natural language processing model.

SK Telecom said SAPEON is advantageous in reducing carbon emissions as it consumes only 80 percent of necessary power compared to the existing GPU. The new chip’s deep learning operation speed is also 1.5 times faster than that of the existing GPU, with the price 50 percent lower.

The new AI chip is expected help SK Group achieve its goal to contribute to global carbon neutrality by reducing up to 200 million tons of carbon emissions by 2030, which was announced by its chief Chey Tae-won in a new year’s message.

SK Telecom’s car navigation affiliate T MAP Mobility is also in line with the group’s commitment by helping drivers change their driving behavior in a way to reduce gasoline consumption.

The service launched last year will convert the driver’s safety driving history into points by analyzing driving data such as speeding, acceleration, and deceleration. The converted points are linked with economic benefits such as insurance premium discounts. Usually, if a car runs at a constant speed (rpm 2,000 or less), fuel efficiency increases.

Greenhouse gas emissions saved through T MAP’s driving behavior service came to 1.22 million tons in 2020 and are expected to double to 2.62 million tons in 2030.

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