BRN Discussion Ongoing

[FJ-215]

Hi Gazza,

Thanks for this. We've seen a couple of articles along this line, which allow me to maintain my illusion about software as a product.

As you may or may not know, I've been posting about the possibility of our EAPs using Akida simulation software, particularly after the emergence of Akida 2 + TeNNs more than 30 months ago, with Valeo and MB using software for signal processing. This sentence from the article again adds more grist to that rumor mill:

"The company has developed an Edge AI platform that combines innovative silicon IP, software, and machine learning."

To repeat myself, no potential user would commit to Akida 2 in silicon while the tech was in a state of flux. The use of software AI is not so problematic in ICEs as it is in EVs, but from what we've heard about TeNNs, the power and latency could be tolerated in EVs using TeNNs in software. Of course, the software would sensibly include the full Akida 2 simulation including TeNNs, or TeNNs could be used on its own. Software can be readily updated as new developments are implemented, whereas silicon is set in stone.

It's been several months since Anil announced the proposed tapeout of Akida 2, which suggests that the development had reached a satisfactory plateau of stability sufficient for the company to commit to silicon. The tapeout was subsequently "delegated" to a mysterious "other" - the rest is silence.

The SPP talks about developing a cloud-based FPGA demonstration setup, again, not a tapeout. This would be a cheaper way to obtain customer feedback than taping out and making a batch of "engineering sample" chips.

Presumably the mysterious "other" would want to be in on the results of the cloud feedback before going to silicon.

Does this mean that we need to wait for the cloud FPGA venture to provide meaningful results before the tapeout can be implemented? - sigh!

Does it follow that BRN will become a software provider, at least in the short term?

Hi @Diogenese,

One question I would have for Sean, is, how do we provide yield numbers for Akida 2 without proving it out in silicon? Yes, we have AKD 1000/1500 from two different foundries but no commercial runs to speak of.

If I remember the ARM history correctly, they were on their 4th or 5th run of commercial chips before going down the IP route that BRN is trying to copy.

 

[FiveBucks]

Hi @Diogenese,

One question I would have for Sean, is, how do we provide yield numbers for Akida 2 without proving it out in silicon? Yes, we have AKD 1000/1500 from two different foundries but no commercial runs to speak of.

If I remember the ARM history correctly, they were on their 4th or 5th run of commercial chips before going down the IP route that BRN is trying to copy.

Did we jump the gun by going the IP route?

Or are we ahead of the game?

 

[FJ-215]

Did we jump the gun by going the IP route?

Or are we ahead of the game?

Who knows, maybe a mix of the two.

 

[Frangipani]

Researchers at UC Irvine’s Cognitive Anteater Robotics Laboratory (CARL), led by Jeffrey Krichmar, have been experimenting with AKD1000:








View attachment 67694

CARL: Home Page

sites.socsci.uci.edu

View attachment 67690


View attachment 67691

View attachment 67692

CARLsim: GPU-accelerated Spiking Neural Network (SNN) simulator

sites.socsci.uci.edu

View attachment 67693

GitHub - UCI-CARL/CARLsimPP

Contribute to UCI-CARL/CARLsimPP development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

View attachment 67695

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2404.08726

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2404.08726

This is the paper I linked in my previous post, co-authored by Lars Niedermeier, a Zurich-based IT consultant, and the above-mentioned Jeff Krichmar from UC Irvine.

The two of them co-authored three papers in recent years, including one in 2022 with another UC Irvine professor and member of the CARL team, Nikil Dutt (https://ics.uci.edu/~dutt/) as well as Anup Das from Drexel University, whose endorsement of Akida is quoted on the BrainChip website:

Lars Niedermeier’s and Jeff Krichmar’s April 2024 publication on CARLsim++ (which does not mention Akida) ends with the following conclusion and the acknowledgement that their work was supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research - the funding has been going on at least since 2022 -

UCI-led team uses robots to study brain’s ability to switch between first-person experience and global map

www.socsci.uci.edu

and a UCI Beall Applied Innovation Proof of Product Award (https://innovation.uci.edu/pop/)

and they also thank the regional NSF I-Corps (= Innovation Corps) for valuable insights.

Their use of an E-Puck robot (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-puck_mobile_robot) for their work reminded me of our CTO’s address at the AGM in May, during which he envisioned the following object (from 22:44 min):

“Imagine a compact device similar in size to a hockey puck that combines speech recognition, LLMs and an intelligent agent capable of controlling your home’s lighting, assisting with home repairs and much more. All without needing constant connectivity or having to worry about privacy and security concerns, a major barrier to adaptation, particularly in industrial settings.”

Possibly something in the works here?

The version the two authors were envisioning in their April 2024 paper is, however, conceptualised as being available as a cloud service:

“We plan a hybrid approach to large language models available as cloud service for processing of voice and text to speech.”


The authors gave a tutorial on CARLsim++ at NICE 2024, where our CTO Tony Lewis was also presenting. Maybe they had a fruitful discussion at that conference in La Jolla, which resulted in UC Irvine’s Cognitive Anteater Robotics Laboratory (CARL) team experimenting with AKD1000, as evidenced in the video uploaded a couple of hours ago that I shared in my previous post?

NICE 2024 - Agenda

flagship.kip.uni-heidelberg.de

GCtronic

www.gctronic.com

 

[Frangipani]

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2404.08726

View attachment 67696

This is the paper I linked in my previous post, co-authored by Lars Niedermeier, a Zurich-based IT consultant, and the above-mentioned Jeff Krichmar from UC Irvine.


View attachment 67703

The two of them co-authored three papers in recent years, including one in 2022 with another UC Irvine professor and member of the CARL team, Nikil Dutt (https://ics.uci.edu/~dutt/) as well as Anup Das from Drexel University, whose endorsement of Akida is quoted on the BrainChip website:

View attachment 67702


View attachment 67700




View attachment 67701

Lars Niedermeier’s and Jeff Krichmar’s April 2024 publication on CARLsim++ (which does not mention Akida) ends with the following conclusion and the acknowledgement that their work was supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research - the funding has been going on at least since 2022 -

UCI-led team uses robots to study brain’s ability to switch between first-person experience and global map

www.socsci.uci.edu

and a UCI Beall Applied Innovation Proof of Product Award (https://innovation.uci.edu/pop/)

and they also thank the regional NSF I-Corps (= Innovation Corps) for valuable insights.

View attachment 67699



View attachment 67704


Their use of an E-Puck robot (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-puck_mobile_robot) for their work reminded me of our CTO’s address at the AGM in May, during which he envisioned the following object (from 22:44 min):

“Imagine a compact device similar in size to a hockey puck that combines speech recognition, LLMs and an intelligent agent capable of controlling your home’s lighting, assisting with home repairs and much more. All without needing constant connectivity or having to worry about privacy and security concerns, a major barrier to adaptation, particularly in industrial settings.”

Possibly something in the works here?

The version the two authors were envisioning in their April 2024 paper is, however, conceptualised as being available as a cloud service:

“We plan a hybrid approach to large language models available as cloud service for processing of voice and text to speech.”


The authors gave a tutorial on CARLsim++ at NICE 2024, where our CTO Tony Lewis was also presenting. Maybe they had a fruitful discussion at that conference in La Jolla, which resulted in UC Irvine’s Cognitive Anteater Robotics Laboratory (CARL) team experimenting with AKD1000, as evidenced in the video uploaded a couple of hours ago that I shared in my previous post?

NICE 2024 - Agenda

flagship.kip.uni-heidelberg.de

View attachment 67705

GCtronic

www.gctronic.com

View attachment 67716

While I was out running errands just now, I recalled that we had some sort of connection to UCI through one of our research scientists - and bingo!

Kristofor Carlson was a postdoc at Jeff Krichmar‘s Cognitive Robotics Lab a decade ago and co-authored a number of research papers with both Jeff Krichmar and Nikil Dutt over the years, the last one published in 2019:

 

[charles2]

Changes are being made.

Big ones

BrainChip Appoints New CMO, Enhances Scientific Advisory Board

LAGUNA HILLS, Calif., August 07, 2024--BrainChip Appoints New CMO, Enhances Scientific Advisory Board

finance.yahoo.com

 

[charles2]

And huge capitulation on NASDAQ for BRCHF.

Over 700k on offer and sizable share dumps as low as 10 cents (US)

Usually capitulation is a good sign.....the weak hands give up at any price.

(He says wistfully).

 

[Diogenese]

Intel Foundry Achieves Major Milestones​

Intel 18A powered on and healthy, on track for next-gen client and server chip production next year.

View attachment 67663

View attachment 67664


BrainChip is an IP Partner of IFS. Worth reading the second link as well.

View attachment 67665

Intel Foundry Achieves Major Milestones

Intel 18A powered on and healthy, on track for next-gen client and server chip production next year.

www.intel.com

Kevin O’Buckley Talks Progress on Intel 18A

New Foundry Services leader reveals why he came to Intel, excitement for the foundry business and why Intel 18A matters to the future of computing.

www.intel.com

Hi Evermont,

Interesting development.

Could it be that the tapeout of Akida 2 has been delayed so it can be adapted for Intel's 18A process?


https://www.intel.com/content/www/u...ndry-achieves-major-milestones.html#gs.dahsjf

What’s New: Intel today announced that its lead products on Intel 18A, Panther Lake (AI PC client processor) and Clearwater Forest (server processor), are out of the fab and have powered-on and booted operating systems. These milestones were achieved less than two quarters after tape-out, with both products on track to start production in 2025. The company also announced that the first external customer is expected to tape out on Intel 18A in the first half of next year.
...
More on Intel 18A: In July, Intel released the 18A Process Design Kit (PDK) 1.0, design tools that enable foundry customers to harness the capabilities of RibbonFET gate-all-around transistor architecture and PowerVia backside power delivery in their designs on Intel 18A. Electronic design automation (EDA) and intellectual property (IP) partners are updating their offerings to enable customers to begin their final production designs.
...
How Customers are Involved: In gaining access to the Intel 18A PDK 1.0 last month, the company’s EDA and IP partners are updating their tools and design flows to enable external foundry customers to begin their Intel 18A chip designs. This is a critical enabling milestone for Intel’s foundry business.

The "A" in 18A is Angstrom, a measurement unit = 0.1 nm, so 18A = 1.8 nm. At these distances you're starting to get close to where parasitic quantum effects can influence the operation of the transistors, and the impedance of the connecting "wires" becomes a significant source of power loss. I would think that this will need a whole new design system. Intel are using gate-all-around transistors which are very different from our planar CMOS technology - no wonder Anil is retiring!

Akida's SNN sparsity would help overcome the connector wire impedance loss by sending electrical impulses less frequently than MACs.

 

[CHIPS]

There is new hope on the horizon!

BrainChip Appoints New CMO, Enhances Scientific Advisory Board

BrainChip Appoints New CMO, Enhances Scientific Advisory Board Laguna Hills, Calif. – August 7th, 2024 – BrainChip Holdings Ltd (ASX: BRN, OTCQX: BRCHF, ADR: BCHPY), the world’s first commercial producer of ultra-low power, fully digital, event-based, neuromorphic AI, today announced that it...

brainchip.com

BrainChip Appoints New CMO, Enhances Scientific Advisory Board​

Laguna Hills, Calif. – August 7th, 2024 – BrainChip Holdings Ltd (ASX: BRN, OTCQX: BRCHF, ADR: BCHPY), the world’s first commercial producer of ultra-low power, fully digital, event-based, neuromorphic AI, today announced that it has hired Steven Brightfield as its new chief marketing officer and has re-envisioned its Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) by bringing on company founder Peter van der Made, Dr. Jason K. Eshraghian and Dr. André van Schaik.

Brightfield has a depth of tech industry knowledge and experience within the AI semiconductor industry. He previously led marketing at several AI focused technology companies, such as SiMa.ai, X-Silicon and Wave Computing combined with deep experience within the semiconductor sector, including executive leadership positions at LSI Logic, Qualcomm, Zoran and others. One of Brightfield’s first priorities at BrainChip will be to oversee the development of a marketing strategy for the new TENNs product, an advanced, ultra efficient neural network architecture and integrate it into the Akida technology platform.

The Scientific Advisory Board provides independent advice and expert consultation for the executive staff of Brainchip to guide the scientific and technical aspects of the company’s short-and long-term goals. The SAB also reviews and evaluates the research and development programs of BrainChip with respect to quality and scope. The re-envisioned SAB provides new perspectives from key industry leaders in AI with increasing focus under the leadership of Dr. Tony Lewis.

van der Made has been at the forefront of computer innovation for 45 years. One of the founders of BrainChip, he designed the first generations of digital neuromorphic devices on which the Akida™ chip was based. van der Made previously served as chief technology officer for BrainChip until his retirement last year. He remains a member of the company’s board of directors.

Eshraghian is an Assistant Professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz. He serves as the Secretary of the Neural Systems and Applications Technical Committee. His research interests are in large-scale neuromorphic computing. Dr. Eshraghian is the developer of snnTorch, a widely used Python library with more than 150,000 downloads used to train and model spiking neural networks, and his lab developed several high-profile language models, including SpikeGPT, and the MatMul-
Free LLM.

Van Schaik is a pioneer of the field of neuromorphic engineering. He is a professor of electrical engineering at the Western Sydney University and director of the International Centre for Neuromorphic Systems, also in Australia. His research focuses on neuromorphic engineering and computational neuroscience. Dr. Van Schaik has authored more than 300 publications, invented more than 35 patents and is a founder of four start-up companies: VAST Audio, Personal Audio, Heard Systems and Optera.

“I am pleased to add new team members with the skills, experience and credentials to advance BrainChip’s adoption in the market” said Sean Hehir, BrainChip’s CEO. “Leveraging Steve’s expertise as a technology marketer and expanding our Scientific Advisory Board with some of the keenest minds in the industry, better positions us to achieve our goals. I am eager to work closely with each of them.”

 

[Diogenese]

Changes are being made.

Big ones

BrainChip Appoints New CMO, Enhances Scientific Advisory Board

LAGUNA HILLS, Calif., August 07, 2024--BrainChip Appoints New CMO, Enhances Scientific Advisory Board

finance.yahoo.com

Hi Charles,

I think our new CMO should invest in a quality pair of garters because he's about to have, or probably already has had, his socks blown off. He will be doing a crash course in digital SNNs.

His earlier foray into AI marketing at Wave Computer* was based on MACs and one of his muses is Yan le Cun who is not a fan of SNNs.

US11227030B2 Matrix multiplication engine using pipelining 20190401

a matrix multiplication engine using pipelining are disclosed. A first and a second matrix are obtained for matrix multiplication. A first matrix multiply-accumulate (MAC) unit is configured, where a first matrix element and a second matrix element are presented to the MAC unit on a first cycle. A second MAC unit is configured in pipelined fashion, where the first element of the first matrix and a second element of the second matrix are presented to the second MAC unit on a second cycle, and where a second element of the first matrix and the first element of the second matrix are presented to the first MAC unit on the second cycle. Additional MAC units are further configured within the processor in pipelined fashion. Multiply-accumulate operations are executed in pipelined fashion on each of n MAC units over additional k sets of m cycles.


*WC recently emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

 

[Frangipani]

Changes are being made.

Big ones

BrainChip Appoints New CMO, Enhances Scientific Advisory Board

LAGUNA HILLS, Calif., August 07, 2024--BrainChip Appoints New CMO, Enhances Scientific Advisory Board

finance.yahoo.com

… and small ones, too:

Merci beaucoup et au revoir, Sébastien Crouzet…

… and welcome to another University of Washington summer intern - Justin-Pierre Tremblay!

FNU Sidharth, a Graduate Student Researcher from the University of Washington in Seattle, will be spending the summer as a Machine Learning Engineering Research Intern at BrainChip:




View attachment 66341

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View attachment 66344


Bingo!

https://thestockexchange.com.au/threads/brn-discussion-ongoing.1/post-425543

View attachment 66345
View attachment 66346

 

[Kachoo]

… and small ones, too:

Merci beaucoup et au revoir, Sébastien Crouzet…

View attachment 67719

View attachment 67720


… and welcome to another University of Washington summer intern - Justin-Pierre Tremblay!


View attachment 67722


View attachment 67723

If you read his summary he has left the R and D life to a more towards public policy type work.

Interesting change in career is good for people at times.

 

[The Pope]

Changes are being made.

Big ones

BrainChip Appoints New CMO, Enhances Scientific Advisory Board

LAGUNA HILLS, Calif., August 07, 2024--BrainChip Appoints New CMO, Enhances Scientific Advisory Board

finance.yahoo.com

Read story and also mentions Dr. Van Schaik linked to western Sydney university. About two years ago others suggested on TSE that my comments on there was a solid connection between PVDM and WSU lectures etc were generally silly. One noteable exception was FF who liked my post. I suggest this WSU connection wasn’t hard to find back then including this guy mentioned above and I recall even WSU lectures denying knowledge on BRN tech to another TSE member while attending a presentation at WSU.
Now the connection is officially reestablished between WSU and BRN let’s see what others on TSE find.
Like I said back then I saw a demonstration (by chance) from WSU that appeared to be BRN tech used (2 years ago) and when I asked questions on tech being used the presenters went quiet and I suggest started playing dumb.
Leave it as that and this is my opinion that WSU have known and experimented with BRN tech for a while ( suggest atleast 3yrs or more given the WSU demo I witnessed)

Have a good day and hopefully Sean and Co can market and sell the TENNS technology into products ASAP.

Cheers
The Pope

 

[IloveLamp]

We’re excited to invite you to an upcoming webinar hosted by Future Electronics, showcasing the Arm® Cortex-M85-based MCUs and their transformative advantages for IoT, AI/ML, and industrial… | Edge Impulse (a Qualcomm company)

We’re excited to invite you to an upcoming webinar hosted by Future Electronics, showcasing the Arm® Cortex-M85-based MCUs and their transformative advantages for IoT, AI/ML, and industrial applications! Join us as our very own Amir Sherman presents “Running NVIDIA TAO Models using Edge Impulse...

www.linkedin.com

 

[DK6161]

Good morning fellow chippers!
What a great news to wake up to.
New CMO. Looks like big changes are being made! Great move Sean and co!
OMG how exciting! This will surely work for us

Can't help to think that if I recall correctly, our previous CMO Nandan had a lot of experience. He was Ex-ARM and came from Amazon. He was touted as the one we need to drive our product marketing globally through his connections. This was 2 years ago and got a lot of share holders excited. Then he left quietly.

I'd give this new guy 2-3 years top.

GLTAH
Not advice

 

[Evermont]

Hi Evermont,

Interesting development.

Could it be that the tapeout of Akida 2 has been delayed so it can be adapted for Intel's 18A process?


https://www.intel.com/content/www/u...ndry-achieves-major-milestones.html#gs.dahsjf

What’s New: Intel today announced that its lead products on Intel 18A, Panther Lake (AI PC client processor) and Clearwater Forest (server processor), are out of the fab and have powered-on and booted operating systems. These milestones were achieved less than two quarters after tape-out, with both products on track to start production in 2025. The company also announced that the first external customer is expected to tape out on Intel 18A in the first half of next year.
...
More on Intel 18A: In July, Intel released the 18A Process Design Kit (PDK) 1.0, design tools that enable foundry customers to harness the capabilities of RibbonFET gate-all-around transistor architecture and PowerVia backside power delivery in their designs on Intel 18A. Electronic design automation (EDA) and intellectual property (IP) partners are updating their offerings to enable customers to begin their final production designs.
...
How Customers are Involved: In gaining access to the Intel 18A PDK 1.0 last month, the company’s EDA and IP partners are updating their tools and design flows to enable external foundry customers to begin their Intel 18A chip designs. This is a critical enabling milestone for Intel’s foundry business.

The "A" in 18A is Angstrom, a measurement unit = 0.1 nm, so 18A = 1.8 nm. At these distances you're starting to get close to where parasitic quantum effects can influence the operation of the transistors, and the impedance of the connecting "wires" becomes a significant source of power loss. I would think that this will need a whole new design system. Intel are using gate-all-around transistors which are very different from our planar CMOS technology - no wonder Anil is retiring!

Akida's SNN sparsity would help overcome the connector wire impedance loss by sending electrical impulses less frequently than MACs.

Innovation seems to be a key theme Dio.

Efficiency and power handling is what we do well.

 

[TECH]

Researchers at UC Irvine’s Cognitive Anteater Robotics Laboratory (CARL), led by Jeffrey Krichmar, have been experimenting with AKD1000:








View attachment 67694

CARL: Home Page

sites.socsci.uci.edu

View attachment 67690


View attachment 67691

View attachment 67692

CARLsim: GPU-accelerated Spiking Neural Network (SNN) simulator

sites.socsci.uci.edu

View attachment 67693

GitHub - UCI-CARL/CARLsimPP

Contribute to UCI-CARL/CARLsimPP development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

View attachment 67695

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2404.08726

Nice Post.....AKD 1000 "yet again" doing us all proud !

Without Peters initial brilliance in creating SNAP 64 none of this would have ever been possible.

AKD 1000 "too narrow" I say yes, if you are referring to making our technology offering to a wider customer base, in an attempt to
potentially capture a larger market share at the edge, BUT AKD 1000 was company defining when in it's first wafer run turned out to
be more successful than both Peter and Anil had hoped for.....

LETS NOT FORGET THAT FACT.......God Bless our Founders Tech (Perth)

 

[supersonic001]

BrainChip continues to evolve our leadership and advisory teams to enhance and elevate our Akida offering. | BrainChip

BrainChip continues to evolve our leadership and advisory teams to enhance and elevate our Akida offering. We're excited about the new perspectives and expertise these changes bring, driving innovation and excellence in our neuromorphic IP solutions. Read the full press release here...

www.linkedin.com

 

[Frangipani]

The two of them co-authored three papers in recent years, including one in 2022 with another UC Irvine professor and member of the CARL team, Nikil Dutt (https://ics.uci.edu/~dutt/) as well as Anup Das from Drexel University, whose endorsement of Akida is quoted on the BrainChip website:

Speaking of Anup Das (and also of Eric Gallo at Accenture Labs):

LinkedIn Login, Sign in | LinkedIn

Login to LinkedIn to keep in touch with people you know, share ideas, and build your career.

www.linkedin.com

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2404.02248

 

[7für7]

I thought it’s maybe important so I decided to post this to be shore everyone will read this…I hope other will follow my example and do the same

BrainChip Appoints New CMO, Enhances Scientific Advisory Board

LAGUNA HILLS, Calif., August 07, 2024--BrainChip Appoints New CMO, Enhances Scientific Advisory Board

finance.yahoo.com