Rebellions teams up with IBM for ATOM AI chip quality test

Rebellions Inc., a South Korean artificial intelligence chip design startup, said on Monday it has forged a partnership with US tech giant IBM to cooperate in generative AI technology development.

As part of the partnership, the Korean fabless chip designer will test-run its AI chip, ATOM, on IBM’s systems at the US firm’s data center in Albany, New York for quality verification.

The test aims to ensure the AI chip’s performance and product reliability at the server level, Rebellions said.

A successful test would enhance Rebellions’ chance to win orders for enterprise AI chips, it said.

Under the partnership, Rebellions will also collaborate with IBM for the expansion of the US firm’s AI ecosystem, which includes partners such as Samsung Electronics Co., Synopsys and Applied Materials.

“Through our partnership with IBM, we expect to better support our generative AI customers, particularly those in the inference domain, and unveil new products more quickly,” said Oh Jin-wook, co-founder and chief technology officer (CTO) of Rebellions.

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Rebellions came into the AI tech world spotlight in April when it beat much bigger rivals in a chip performance test, MLPerf.

In the latest MLPerf test, Rebellions’ AI chip ATOM performed the best, proving itself fastest in processing large language and vision models.

ATOM’s processing speed was up to 3.4 times faster than the same class chips by Qualcomm Technologies Inc. and Nvidia Corp. This means that ChatGPT operated on an ATOM-fitted computer delivers the quickest answers to its users

Unlike general-purpose system chips such as central processing units (CPUs) and graphics processing units (GPUs), an AI chip such as Rebellions’ ATOM is an integrated circuit designed to run machine learning programs, a key function in generative chatbots.

Rebellions is among the KT Corp.-led Korean “AI full stack” service providers, which offer AI infrastructure such as AI chips, cloud and other applications.

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Rebellions was co-founded in September 2020 by CEO Park Sung-hyun, a former quant developer at global investment bank Morgan Stanley and Elon Musk’s aerospace company SpaceX, and CTO Oh who previously designed AI chips at IBM. Chief Product Officer Kim Hyo-eun was a former deep learning technology developer at AI medical device maker Lunit Inc.

In December 2021, Rebellions unveiled ION, a finance AI chip – the world’s fastest at the time.

Since its establishment three years ago, the company has received over 100 billion won ($76 million) in investments from venture capitalists and institutional investors, including Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund Temasek, Pavilion Capital, KT Corp., the state-run Korea Development Bank, Kakao Ventures, Shinhan Capital, KB Investment and Mirae Asset Venture Investment Co.

CEO Park said the company plans to kick off mass production of ATOM chips with Samsung’s 5-nanometer foundry technology in the first quarter of next year.

Write to Joo-Wan Kim at kjwan@hankyung.com

In-Soo Nam edited this article.