OmniSci, Intel Join Forces to Produce Better CPU Analytics

An upstart company is aiming to transform data analyticsOpens a new window , and its recent deal with Intel may give it just the opening it needs.

OmniSci,Opens a new window a company that specializes in artificial intelligence for advanced analytics processing, has formed a partnership with Intel. Through this agreement, OmniSci and Intel plan to capitalize on what the Silicon Valley start-up has learned about using processing power of the state-of-the-art computers and applying it to Intel’s standard processors.

It’s a huge deal for a young company.

The partnership will allow OmniSci to apply its experience developing data analytics for more sophisticated and far more expensive graphics processing unitsOpens a new window , or GPUs, and transfer it to creating solutions for Intel’s less expensive central processing units, or CPUs.

And behind the talk of processor technology is the company’s goal to bring data analytics to a greater audience of individuals and companies.

“From our beginning, OmniSci has been focused on providing our users the fastest and most frictionless path to insight on the largest datasets,” saysOpens a new window Todd Mostak, OmniSci’s co-founder and chief executive. “To do so, we architected our platform to take advantage of all the performance and parallelism of modern hardware, whether GPU or CPU.”

Understanding how the deal will help facilitate this – and why it matters in a world of 5G and artificial intelligence – requires a look at the two processors and their capabilities.

Comparing CPUs to GPUs

Intel’s CPUs carry out the instructions of a computer program by performing certain computations. The GPU processor, which was developed by Nvidia, performs the same kinds of tasks as CPUs but does so at a much faster pace.

A GPU breaks a complex problem up into thousands of small tasks and completes them simultaneously, as opposed to the sequential approach of CPUs.

The GPU’s data-processing breakthroughs have opened the door to the kind of computational firepower that artificial intelligence needs.

“GPUs have ignited a worldwide AI boom,” saysOpens a new window Brian Caulfield on the Nvidia blog site. “They’ve become a key part of modern supercomputing. They’ve been woven into a sprawling new hyperscale data centers. Still prized by gamers, they’ve become accelerators speeding up all sorts of tasks from encryption to networking to AI.”

The vision behind the OmniSci-Intel deal is to provide a similar analytics possibility for computers with CPU processors.

These computers, while not as powerful as those with GPUs, are also less expensive. As a result, for many small- and medium-sized businesses, investing in accelerated analytics on their existing machines is a more attractive proposition.

The advancement to the CPUs will also help high-end data processing arrangements that rely on the cloud by allowing companies to use the technology to relieve some of the pressure on over-burdened servers.

New Customers on the Horizon

The move is designed to open up the market to companies that have millions, rather than billions, of records to analyze, which could be handled using a single CPU processor on a desktop or laptop computer.

Currently, such a company must find prospects with a critical level of data to justify the expense of GPU processing.

“With an expansion to Intel CPUs,” saysOpens a new window Forbes’ David Teich, “OmniSci can now look at companies who have that larger need in some areas but want to start with a more focused, lower data volume, but still an important area of business need.”

The challenge for OmniSci will be to balance the development of its work for Intel’s CPUs while still continuing to push forward its work on Nvidia’s GPU solutions.

Balancing the needs of both companies, while tricky, should still meet the company’s intention to make further strides in the world of data analytics.

“The original business of OmniSci was not just to build a visual analytics platform or visual database,” saysOpens a new window Mostak, OmniSci’s CEO. “It was to build a real-time analytics experience.”