Moore Threads, a China-based GPU developer, raised round $215.4 million in Sequence B funding to finance its steady multi-functional GPU analysis and improvement, reviews DigiTimes. The fund-raising indicators traders’ confidence in the rise of China GPU improvement normally fueled by the nation’s want for AI/ML accelerators in addition to graphics processors for gaming.
Since its inception in late 2020, Moore Threads has launched two graphics processors appropriate with the corporate’s MUSA computing platform — Sudi and Chunxiao — and a number of add-in-boards (AIBs) constructed round that base design. Each multi-functional GPUs are designed for quite a few markets, together with gaming, cloud computing, synthetic intelligence/machine studying, FP32 high-performance computing, and digital desktop infrastructure (VDI). Pursuing so many market alternatives lets Moore Threads entice traders with numerous backgrounds.
In its Sequence B funding spherical, Moore Threads secured $215.4 million from an funding fund of China Cellular and Hexe Well being Insurance coverage. China Cellular can reap the benefits of Moore Threads GPU’s AI/ML, gaming, and cloud computing capabilities, whereas Hexe Well being Insurance coverage might be primarily within the acceleration of its synthetic intelligence workloads.
In the meantime, the corporate obtained seed funding and A Sequence funding rounds from ByteDance (Tik Tok proprietor), Tencent, Shenzhen Capital Group (SCGC), Sequoia China, and GGV Capital. The Sequence A funding spherical introduced the corporate round $313 million.
Moore Threads’ newest Chunxiao is a slightly complicated GPU containing 22 billion transistors and packing 4,096 stream processors, 128 tensor cores, 256 texture items, and 256 render outputs clocked at 1.80 GHz. The unit helps FP32, FP16, and INT8 precision for numerous workloads and comes with a video engine that helps AV1, H.264, and H.265 codecs for as much as 8K movies in addition to can decode as much as 32 streams at a 1080p30 decision.
In the meantime, the Chunxiao-based MTT S80 16GB graphics card but has to display its full potential in video video games fashionable in Europe and the U.S. because it presently fails to beat even Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3060 regardless of its increased complexity and compute efficiency (14.4 FP32 TFLOPS vs 12.7 FP32 TFLOPS) because of imperfect drivers.
But, the MTT S80 in addition to its datacenter-oriented MTT S3000 sibling can be utilized to play video games fashionable in China in addition to for distant Android recreation rendering, VDI, numerous synthetic intelligence, machine studying, mild high-performance computing (HPC) that solely requires FP32 precision, and video streaming workloads. Basically, Moore Threads’ Chunxiao GPU meets all the first targets of a Chinese language GPU developer — tackle China’s wants in AI/ML, gaming, cloud computing, and video streaming.
Moore Threads has confirmed that it may construct slightly complicated and succesful graphics processors, however now the corporate’s most important problem is to make sure that these GPUs can tackle all of the workloads they’re meant for, which implies growing drivers and the remainder of the software program stack. Market chief Nvidia has spent years sprucing off its drivers to handle markets that Moore Threads needs to handle. Will Moore Threads have the ability to do the identical in a shorter period of time is one thing solely time will inform. However no less than traders appear to be assured that over time the corporate will have the ability to no less than partially change Nvidia in China.