As rival chip makers work to target workloads using artificial intelligence, Intel Corp. is upping the ante by unifying its own efforts under a dedicated business group announced today.

The division will be led by Naveen Rao, a veteran of the semiconductor industry with a Ph.D. in computational neuroscience. He came aboard last year after Intel acquired his deep learning startup, Nervana Systems Inc., in a deal reportedly worth over $400 million. The executive wrote in a blog post that the Artificial Intelligence Products Group will work to “align resources from across the company to include engineering, labs, software and more” around a common roadmap.

Intel, which has acquired Altera Corp., Nervana, Movidius Ltd. and other intellectual property in recent years, late last year accelerated its efforts in AI, announcing new chips, software and partnerships. It views AI as one of the next big drivers for the company.

Now, Intel needs to connect all that to its homegrown efforts to deliver real products and services, said Patrick Moorhead, president and principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. “That’s where today’s organization comes in play, a centralized organization, reporting directly to CEO Brian Krzanich, to make that happen,” he said. “This is classic organizational strategy, accelerating delivery by organizing a cross-product group directly reporting to the CEO.”

Still, Intel is playing catch-up in AI next to leaders such as Google Inc., IBM Corp., Microsoft Corp. and others, so its stated intention to “rally the industry around a set of standards for AI” could be a stretch. “Whereas Intel was a major player in personal computing, one of the examples it cites, it’s not nearly in the same position of influence with regard to AI,” Jan Dawson of Jackdaw Research wrote on his blog. “So this feels like hubris rather than realism on what Intel’s role will be.”

Intel’s plan includes the launch of a new research center dedicated to advancing the science behind today’s thinking machines. The move follows a recent pledge from Microsoft, which is also betting a lot on artificial intelligence, to establish a new artificial intelligence lab of its own and provide $7 million in grants to researchers. Yet while their basic goals are the same, the companies’ initiatives can be expected to diverge given their vastly different competitive priorities.

Rao wrote that his group’s efforts will focus on the deep learning technology that Intel absorbed through the acquisition of his startup. Nervana was working to develop a chip architecture called Lake Crest that was said to be capable of running artificial intelligence algorithms up to 10 times faster than traditional alternatives. Intel stated last September that it will start shipping processors based on the technology in the first half of 2017.

Rao and his team at Nervana developed Lake Crest to support a homegrown machine learning platform was already available commercially at the time of the acquisition. The software lends itself to natural language processing, object recognition and a wide range of other applications. Rao didn’t specify the areas where his group will work to apply the technology, but Intel’s recent business moves provide plenty of insight into its plans.

The most notable development was its acquisition of autonomous navigation provider Mobileye NV for $15.3 billion earlier this month. The budding self-driving car market is a major priority for Intel not only because of the massive revenue opportunities at hand, but also because it’s a key focus of the competing chip makers working to eat away at its market share.

Last year Qualcomm Inc., for example, shelled out $47 billion to buy NXP Semiconductors NV, the largest chip supplier to the auto industry. More recently, Nvidia Corp. established partnerships with with truck maker Paccar Inc. and car parts giant Robert Bosch GmbH to mass-produce AI hardware for vehicles. The alliances are the latest in a series of auto industry wins for the chip maker that included a deal with Elon Musk’s Tesla Inc.

Image: Intel