Tech giant Apple said to be working on a dedicated chip to power AI on devices

With its introduction of Siri in the year 2011, a tool that lets users operate their smartphones with voice commands, the tech giant Apple Inc. got an early start in artificial intelligence software. And now, the giant is creating a buzz by bringing artificial intelligence to chips.

The tech giant is  said to be working on a processor dedicated purposely to AI-related tasks, according to a person recognizable with the matter. Known as the Apple Neural Engine, the chip would perk up the way the company's devices knob tasks that would otherwise require human intelligence - such as facial recognition and speech acknowledge, said the person, who requested secrecy discussing a product that hasn't been made public. Apple declined to comment.

In the ever growing field of artificial intelligence, the engineers at Apple are racing to catch their peers at Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc.  While Siri offered Apple an ultimately advantage in voice-recognition, competitors have since been more hostile in organizing AI across their product lines, including Amazon's Echo and Google's Home digital assistants. An AI-enabled processor would help the tech giant Apple put together more superior capabilities into devices, particularly cars that drive themselves and gadgets that sprint augmented reality, the technology that place over graphics and other information onto a person's view of the world.

"Two of the areas that Apple is betting its future on require AI," said Gene Munster, former Apple analyst and co-founder of venture capital firm Loup Ventures. "At the core of augmented reality and self-driving cars is artificial intelligence."

The Apple devices at present handle complex artificial intelligence processes with two different chips: the main processor and the graphics chip. The all new chip will let Apple relieve of the tasks onto a devoted unit designed purposely for demanding artificial intelligence processing, allowing Apple to get better battery performance.