Hi
@Rocket577 ,
@Fact Finder ,
here is an extract from an article posted by
@Fullmoonfever discussing potential interworking of Akida and Quadric.
#10,930
What people have found is that the existing processors from ARM or RISC-V do not address the power performance requirements of the AI industry. There are some low-end cases that can be handled with software on these embedded processors. In general, people are looking for either accelerators to pair with those processors, or completely new processors, that would replace the embedded processor and AI into a much higher performance functionality.
In this case, MegaChips’ partner, BrainChip, is an example of an accelerator that would be combined with the existing embedded processors. In the case of its other IP partner, Quadric, they could be either used as an accelerator, or even supersede the need for an embedded processor.
Determining success
Now, there have been attempts from some others, but not with much success. How can MegaChips determine its path?
megachips-logo-200x40-1.png
According to Fairbairn, we see this as an emerging market. Those who tried to enter with volume production capabilities up until now were too early to the party. It’s only now that people are reaching the point where they are in need of volume production opportunities.
There have been many obstacles to the adoption of AI, and adoption has been relatively slow. MegaChips realized that, and partnered with a couple of IP vendors that already had some significant traction, but also needed the muscle of pairing up with a silicon vendor to actually provide a complete solution to the customer.
By combining forces and offering that complete solution, and with the ability to help the customer determine which solution is best to integrate into a single chip or module, we can help overcome those things. We are investing heavily in internal capability to address this very need. We believe that we’re hitting the market at an ideal time to be involved with some designs that can go into production in the near future.
Now I'm not quite sure if they are suggesting:
A) a combination of Akida IP and Quadric IP, perhaps replacing the Quadric MACs (114) and ALUs (118) with Akida NPUs, and using Quadric's reconfigurable interconnexion architecture (120, 122) which I would see as a "coals to Newcastle" solution as far as Akida is concerned because Akida's NPU/core interconnect architecture is already highly flexible, and because the additional IC redesign work would be prohibitive, or
B) using Akida as an accelerator for Quadric, which would seem to be redundant, or
C) simply offering them for different tasks as FF suggests. FF's suggestion seems most probable from "
the ability to help the customer determine which solution is best to integrate into a single chip or module", as clearly MegaChips sees them as complementary solutions.
Far be it from me to suggest that one of these makes the other redundant, but I'd like to see the evidence showing that Quadric is better than Akida with a CPU or GPU co-processor.