Yep, NVIDIA. Nervana's dedicated ASIC will deliver 55 (mostly) int16 TOps in 2017. In contrast, the two Titan XP GPUs I bought last week for a total of $2400 deliver 44 such TOps. Next year, a single Volta GPU will deliver at least 36 so I saw no way for them to win on their own with NVIDIA's GPU roadmap merrily marching along since 2007.
However, getting access to Intel's fabs makes them a lot more interesting and competitive. It's not a slamdunk for Intel yet because they still have to incorporate this into their product line (anyone seen Altera's Stratix 10 yet? Because that was supposed to be 2014's 10+ TFLOP GPU killer), but it's a fantastic acquisition and I wish them the best.
However, getting access to Intel's fabs makes them a lot more interesting and competitive. It's not a slamdunk for Intel yet because they still have to incorporate this into their product line (anyone seen Altera's Stratix 10 yet? Because that was supposed to be 2014's 10+ TFLOP GPU killer), but it's a fantastic acquisition and I wish them the best.