Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan reveals the biggest challenge that computer industry may face due to AI — It's not processors

Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan has sounded a warning as the demand for AI keeps rising, and it does not have anything to do with processors.

Speaking at Intel's Annual Summit, the Intel CEO revealed that there is no relief for the computer industry in sight as memory-shortage is likely to persist of another two years.

He said that AI is ‘sucking’ up a lot of memory that the computer industry has.

“I think this whole AI is sucking up a lot of memory. Our mutual friend, Jensen (Huang, Nvidia CEO) tonight, you talk to him. And clearly, he needs a lot of memory for his login and the next-generation product. And so I think it's very important to have that memory. If anything is going to slow down, it is going to be the memory,” Tan said.

A massive expansion of artificial intelligence infrastructure has fuelled demand for memory chips, decreasing the supply available to traditional computers and smartphones.

He called the memory shortage ‘the biggest challenge’ in terms of AI. “I think in terms of the AI, the biggest challenge, I think, for a lot of my customer is memory.”

The Intel CEO revealed there is no relief until at least 2028 in terms of memory in the computer industry.

“Memory, actually, there's no relief as far as I know, when I talk to only 3 key players, 2 of them I talked to very frequently. And then they told me that Lip-Bu, there's no relief until 2028,” Tan said.

He noted that one of his friends mentioned that Moore's Law used to double every three or four years, and now it's like 3 or 4 months. “So the increase of compute is increasing so much. And right now, my biggest challenge is focus on our production, our supply chain, make sure we can meet the requirement,” he said.

The shortage in memory chips is also bringing price hikes, and potentially hurting the appetite of customers, according to a report by Bloomberg.

Intel to make GPUs

Last week, Lip-Bu Tan told Reuters that Intel plans to build graphics processing units (GPUs), the category of chip popularised by Nvidia.

“I just hired the chief GPU architect, and he's very good. I'm very delighted he joined me,” Tan said, claiming that it took some persuading.

Intel is the largest maker of processors for personal computers, which rely on memory to store and manage data. The top memory manufacturers are Samsung Electronics Co., SK Hynix Inc. and Micron Technology Inc.