Intel, Baidu sign 3-year deal to collaborate in cloud, AI, 5G
Zhenyu Hou (left), VP and GM of Baidu's Technology Group, and Jason Grebe, Intel corporate vice president and general manager of Cloud Platforms and Technologies, shake hands during a meeting at Intel headquarters in Santa Clara, California.
Intel and Baidu on Thursday announced a new, three-year agreement to collaborate on technology related to Baidu's core businesses -- namely, cloud, AI, autonomous driving, 5G and edge technologies. Building on 10 years of partnership, the deal revolves around Intel optimizing its platforms and products for the Chinese tech giant.
More specifically, the two companies will optimize Intel technology for a wide range of Baidu platforms, products and services: Baidu's AI cloud, its mobile search/feed, video streaming, the AI platform BaiduBrain, Baidu's deep learning platform PaddlePaddle, its autonomous driving platform Apollo and the voice assistant platform DuerOS.
The optimizations will leverage various Intel technologies, including power and cooling solutions in the data center, the Xeon Scalable platform, Intel's Optane DC Persistent Memory, Optane DC SSD, silicon photonics, ethernet, AI accelerators and the Intel software stack.
The deal illustrates Intel's efforts to serve as a stronger strategic partner for customers to build up its "data-centric" business. Two weeks ago Intel and SAP announced a multi-year partnership focused on optimizing Intel's platforms for SAP's enterprise applications. And earlier this year, when Intel released its broadest portfolio of Xeon processors to date -- along with other chips, memory and storage solutions -- the company stressed its close work with customers to address their specific needs.