Industrial Automation Magazine India

BrainChip introduces second-generation Akida Platform

Published on : Wednesday 08-03-2023

Introduces Vision Transformers and Spatial-Temporal Convolution for radically fast, hyper-efficient and secure Edge AIoT products, untethered from the cloud.

Laguna Hills, Calif., March 2023 – BrainChip Holdings Ltd, the worlds first commercial producer of ultra-low power, fully digital, neuromorphic AI IP, has announced the second generation of its Akida™ platform that drives extremely efficient and intelligent edge devices for the Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT) solutions and services market that is expected to be $1T+ by 2030. This hyper-efficient yet powerful neural processing system, architected for embedded Edge AI applications, now adds efficient 8-bit processing to go with advanced capabilities such as time domain convolutions and vision transformer acceleration, for an unprecedented level of performance in sub-watt devices, taking them from perception towards cognition.

The second-generation of Akida now includes Temporal Event Based Neural Nets (TENN) spatial-temporal convolutions that supercharge the processing of raw time-continuous streaming data, such as video analytics, target tracking, audio classification, analysis of MRI and CT scans for vital signs prediction, and time series analytics used in forecasting, and predictive maintenance. These capabilities are critically needed in industrial, automotive, digital health, smart home and smart city applications. The TENNs allow for radically simpler implementations by consuming raw data directly from sensors – drastically reduces model size and operations performed, while maintaining very high accuracy. This can shrink design cycles and dramatically lower the cost of development.

We see an increasing demand for real-time, on-device, intelligence in AI applications powered by our MCUs and the need to make sensors smarter for industrial and IoT devices, said Roger Wendelken, Senior Vice President in Renesas IoT and Infrastructure Business Unit. We licensed Akida neural processors because of their unique neuromorphic approach to bring hyper-efficient acceleration for todays mainstream AI models at the edge. With the addition of advanced temporal convolution and vision transformers, we can see how low-power MCUs can revolutionise vision, perception, and predictive applications in wide variety of markets like industrial and consumer IoT and personalized healthcare, just to name a few.

Advancements in AI require parallel advancements in on-device learning capabilities while simultaneously overcoming the challenges of efficiency, scalability, and latency, said Richard Wawrzyniak, principal analyst at Semico Research. BrainChip has demonstrated the ability to create a truly intelligent edge with Akida and moves the needle even more in terms of how Edge AI solutions are developed and deployed. The benefits of on-chip AI from a performance and cost perspective are hard to deny.

Our customers wanted us to enable expanded predictive intelligence, target tracking, object detection, scene segmentation, and advanced vision capabilities. This new generation of Akida allows designers and developers to do things that were not possible before in a low-power edge device, said Sean Hehir, BrainChip CEO. By inferring and learning from raw sensor data, removing the need for digital signal pre-processing, we take a substantial step toward providing a cloudless Edge AI experience.

https://brainchip.com/brainchip-introduces-second-generation-akida-platform/