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ASX AnnouncementASX Announcement______________________________________________________________________________BrainChip Holdings Ltd ACN 151 159 812Level 12 680 George Street Sydney NSW 2000T:+61282807355|F:+61292870350|W:www.brainchipinc.com
BrainChip and Socionext Sign Memorandum of UnderstandingAkidaTMDevelopment moves forward with an Industry Leading ASIC Partner •Path to physical production of AkidaTMNeuromorphic System-on-Chip•Memorandum of Understanding with SocionextoSocionext is a leading provider of Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASIC)oMemorandum of Understanding outlines Key Terms of a Definitive Agreement•Definitive Agreement to be negotiated incoming monthsoPreparatory works under wayin the interimSydney, Australia –14March, 2019:
BrainChip Holdings Ltd (ASX: BRN), the leading neuromorphic computing company, today announced the execution of a Memorandum of Understanding(MoU) with Socionext AmericaInc.for the development of the AkidaTMNeuromorphicSystem-on-Chip (NSoC).
Since inception,BrainChip has been committed to providing an artificial intelligence solution as an integrated circuit.
The MoU with Socionext marks a major milestone in the development of the Akida NSoC, setting out the basis on which the companies will negotiate a definitive agreement to deliver a physical Akida chip.
That agreement is expected to be finalised within the coming months, although each of the parties is undertaking necessary preparatory works in the interim.Socionextis a leading ASIC supplier with demonstrated success in delivering the highest quality productwithan efficient time-to-market record for its partners. Socionext was created from the SoCbusinesses of Fujitsu and Panasonic.
The joint development between BrainChip and Socionext is founded upon the combination of BrainChip’s extensive experience in implementing Spiking NeuralNetworks (SNNs) and Socionext’sproven competencyin delivering ASICproducts.BrainChip has made great strides in the Akida development, creating a design that is very compact, flexible, provides low-latency and is low-power for AI Edge applications.
The device can be user-configured for both convolutional and fully-connected networks and isapplicable to a broad range of visual, data, and sensor applications.
Akida will deliver up to 1.2 million neurons and over 10 billion synapses in a low-power chip, expandable to a far greater capacity by utilizing off-chip memory.
The details of the design are proprietary and are described in the Company’s currently pending provisional patent.
The Company is working on a series of patents covering all aspects of the unique Akida design in detail.
Anil Mankar, BrainChip Chief Development Officer commented, “After a great deal of investigation and diligence, it is clear that Socionext has the commitment, competency, intellectual property and desire to work with us on the implementation and launch of Akida. This is acomplex design that requires close collaboration with our design and manufacturing partner. Socionext is a leader in the ASIC market and has specific domain competency in image processing. We are proud to announce this memorandum of understanding and look forward to working with Socionext to complete the design and introduce Akida.”
BrainChip and Socionext Sign a Definitive Agreement to Develop the AkidaTM Neuromorphic System-on-Chip
Company Secures Funding for Product Development
• Agreement with Socionext, a world-class developer of complex ASICs
• Foundry partner of TSMC, a world leading foundry for wafer supply
• Capital raise secured, to support initial product development
• Significant interest in BrainChip’s ground breaking SNN Technology
Sydney, Australia – 26 June 2019: BrainChip Holdings Ltd (ASX: BRN), the leading AI Edge company, today announced the signing of a definitive agreement with Socionext America Inc (SNA) for product development and manufacturing of its Akida Neuromorphic System-on-Chip (NSoC).
This agreement marks a major milestone for bringing the Akida NSoC to market.
Socionext Inc. (SNI), headquartered in Shin-Yokohama, Japan, is the combination of the former Fujitsu and Panasonic System-on- Chip (SoC) businesses. According to IHS, Socionext is the world’s second largest ASIC design and development house. SNA, the American division of SNI, is headquartered in Santa
Clara, California.
This joint program pairs Socionext’s wide variety of engineering disciplines and decades of ASIC design experience with BrainChip’s proven AI engineering teams in Aliso Viejo, California and Toulouse, France.
Akida is a complete edge network AI SoC, which includes on-chip training, inference and continuous unsupervised learning. As the first complete neuromorphic neural network SoC to address AI Edge applications, the device supports both traditional Convolutional Neural Networks or event-based Spiking Neural Networks.
Recent progress on the development of the Akida solution includes:
• In July 2018, BrainChip introduced the Akida Development Environment which fully simulates the Akida SoC and provides performance information for accuracy, speed, latency and power for customer evaluation and implementation.
• In Septmber 2018, the Company introduced the Akida Architecture after filing a comprehensive provisional patent covering the device inventions and methods.
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BrainChip Holdings Ltd
ACN 151 159 812
Level 12 225 George St Sydney NSW 2000
T: +61 2 8016 2841 | F: +61 2 9297 0644 | W: www.brainchipinc.com
• In May 2019, the Company announced the availability of licensing the Akida Neural Processing Core (NPC) intellectual property (IP) for integration by semiconductor and system companies. This allows companies to create solutions which benefit from lower power, higher speed and similar accuracy of existing complex CNNs that use a host processor for training and inference with a secondary device for computational acceleration.
• In June 2019, the Company filed a further provisional patent covering additional inventions and methods.
• In June 2019, the Company introduced a CNN-to-SNN converter that companies can use to convert and reduce power from existing CNN networks to event-based SNN networks.
Socionext will provide turn-key ASIC services to BrainChip for the Akida product, including intellectual property (IP) blocks for the external interfaces, the CPU Complex for internal control and data pre-processing, place and route of the integrated circuit, IP verification, final logic design, as well as managing wafer fabrication, assembly and test operations. Wafers will be provided by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Ltd (TSMC), a world leader in semiconductor technology and wafer fabrication on its competitive and cost effective 28nm CMOS logic process.
“We are excited to join BrainChip in the design, development and introduction of Akida” said Noriaki Kubo, Corporate Executive Vice President of Socionext. “Bringing artificial intelligence to edge applications is a major industry development and a strategic application segment for Socionext. Socionext provides suppliers such as BrainChip with a large engineering solutions platform, ranging from integrated circuit design through final test and assembly, to bring high quality products to market efficiently.”
“We are extremely pleased to work with Socionext, one of the world’s leading SoC development and manufacturing teams” said Louis DiNardo, CEO of BrainChip. “With the firm backing by such a preeminent partner, we are confident we will be supplying the world’s first complete AI Edge network solution”