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JK200SX

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Brainchip just Tweeted



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March 3, 2022

Brain Chips are Here!​


by Max Maxfield
I remember the heady thrill of the early 1980s when the unwashed masses (in the form of myself and my friends) first started to hear people talking about “expert systems.” These little rascals (the systems, not the people) were an early form of artificial intelligence (AI) that employed a knowledge base of facts and rules and an inference engine that could use the knowledge base to deduce new information.
It’s not unfair to say that expert systems were pretty darned clever for their time. Unfortunately, their capabilities were over-hyped, while any problems associated with creating and maintaining their knowledge bases were largely glossed over. It was also unfortunate that scurrilous members of the marketing masses started to attach the label “artificial intelligence” to anything and everything with gusto and abandon, but with little regard for the facts (see also An Expert Systems History).

As a result, by the end of the 1990s, the term “artificial intelligence” left a bad taste in everyone’s mouths. To be honest, I’d largely pushed AI to the back of my mind until it — and its machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) cousins — unexpectedly burst out of academia into the real world circa 2015, give or take.

There are, of course, multiple enablers to this technology, including incredible developments in algorithms and frameworks and processing power. Now, of course, AI is all around us, with new applications popping up on a daily basis.

Initially, modern incarnations of AI were predominantly to be found basking in the cloud (i.e., on powerful servers in data centers). The cloud is still where a lot of the training of AI neural networks takes place, but inferencing — using trained neural network models to make predictions — is increasingly working its way to the edge where the data is generated. In fact, the edge is expected to account for almost three quarters of the inference market by 2025.

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The predicted inference market in 2025 (Image source: BrainChip)

The thing about working on the edge is that you are almost invariably limited with respect to processing performance and power consumption. This leads us to the fact that the majority of artificial neural networks (ANNs) in use today are of a type known as a convolutional neural network (CNN), which relies heavily on matrix multiplications. One way to look at a CNN is that every part of the network is active all of the time. Another type of ANN, known as a spiking neural network (SNN), is based on events. That is, the SNN’s neurons do not transmit information at each propagation cycle (as is the case with multi-layer CNNs). Rather, they transmit information only when incoming signals cross a specific threshold.

The ins and outs (no pun intended) of all this are too complex to go into here. Suffice it to say that an SNN-based neuromorphic chip can process information in nanoseconds (as opposed to milliseconds in a human brain or a GPU) using only microwatts to milliwatts of power (as opposed to ~20 watts for the human brain and hundreds of watts for a GPU).

Now, if you are feeling unkind, you may be thinking something like, “Pull the other one, it’s got bells on.” Alternatively, if you are feeling a tad more charitable, you might be saying to yourself, “I’ve heard all of this before, and I’ve even seen demos, but I won’t believe anything until I’ve tried it for myself.” Either way, I have some news that will bring a smile to your lips, a song to your heart, and a glow your day (you’re welcome).

You may recall us talking about a company called BrainChip here on EEJournal over the past couple of years (see BrainChip Debuts Neuromorphic Chip and Neuromorphic Revolution by Kevin Morris, for example). Well, I was just chatting with Anil Mankar, who is the Chief Development Officer at BrainChip. Anil informed me that the folks at BrainChip are now taking orders for Mini PCIe boards flaunting their AKD1000 neuromorphic AIoT chips.
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Mini PCIe board boasting an AKD1000 neuromorphic AIoT chip
(Image source: BrainChip)


These boards and chips and BrainChip’s design environment support all of the common AI frameworks like TensorFlow, including trained CNN to SNN translation.

If you are a developer, you can plug an AKD1000-powered Mini PCIe board into your existing system to unlock the capabilities for a wide array of edge AI applications, including Smart City, Smart Health, Smart Home, and Smart Transportation. Even better, BrainChip will also offer the full PCIe design layout files and the bill of materials (BOM) to system integrators and developers to enable them to build their own boards and implement AKD1000 chips in volume as stand-alone embedded accelerators or as co-processors. Just to give you a tempting teaser as to what’s possible, there’s a bunch of videos on BrainChip’s YouTube channel, including the following examples:
These PCIe boards are immediately available for pre-order on the BrainChip website, with pricing starting at $499. As the guys and gals at BrainChip like to say: “We don’t make the sensors — we make them smart; we don’t add complexity — we eliminate it; we don’t waste time — we save it.” And, just to drive their point home, they close by saying, “We solve the tough Edge AI problems that others do not or cannot solve.” Well, far be it for me to argue with logic like that. For myself, I’m now pondering how I can use one of these boards to detect and identify stimuli and control my animatronic robot head. Oh, I forgot that I haven’t told you about that yet — my bad. Fear not, I shall rend the veils asunder in a future column. In the meantime, do you have any thoughts you’d care to share of a neuromorphic nature?

IMO, BRN needs to stop using the picture of the PCIE board that doesn't have components loaded on it.
 
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Yesterday someone asked the sensible question what will the new Chair’s role be and will he be continuing as a consultant? Well I asked the company and this is the reply:

“Our new Chair, Antonio will change roles effective immediately and no longer serve on the committees since he is now chair. He will however retain his other role as an advisor to the company as a consultant. He has proven to be invaluable in a wide variety of matters. We are lucky to have him.”

My opinion only but I agree Brainchip has fallen on their feet with this appointment but DYOR
FF

AKIDA BALLISTA
 
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butcherano

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I would like to see the next update of the R-Car V3H incorporate Akida 1000 ... see:
View attachment 2190 in the block diagram below.

https://www.renesas.com/us/en/document/fly/renesas-r-car-v3h?language=en&r=1215766 View attachment 2189

https://www.renesas.com/us/en/produ...ntelligent-camera-deep-learning-capabilities?

Building on the state-of-the-art recognition technology introduced with the R-Car V3H in February 2018, which includes integrated IP for convolutional neural networks (CNN), the updated R-Car V3H delivers 4 times the performance for CNN processing compared to the earlier version

Features

  • Low power consumption and highly-efficient image recognition engine delivers up to 7.2 TOPS, including 3.7 TOPS for CNN, with optimized performance-to-power balance
  • Quad Arm® Cortex®-A53 for application programming and dual Cortex-R7 lockstep cores to run AUTOSAR, supporting ASIL D development process for systematic capability for the full SOC
  • Features a full set of video processing and image recognition IP for advanced sensing and recognition, including CNN-IP, computer vision engine, image-distortion-correction IPs, stereovision, classifier and dense optical flow
I wonder what "low power" is in this context.
Timing for this looks good too....

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D

Deleted member 118

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Latest rumours on the Apple Car and it seems like they are having issues getting anyone to help manufacture it.

 
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GazDix

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Looks like Intel are going into the chip producing business with backing from the US government. Some market analysts in the States think it is risky changing their specialisation.

I am sure Brainchip was a big reason why they are exploring new ventures.

They will also plan to supply their chips to Apple and Qualcomm (amongst others... <us?>) but are four years away.
 

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Bravo

If ARM was an arm, BRN would be its biceps💪!
A different spin on neuromorphic computing...



Extract 1
The joint Swedish/Japanese Topspin research shows that oscillators and oscillating circuits can carry out complex calculations in way that mimics how human nerve and memory cells seem to do the same thing.

Extract 2

In regard to better, more energy-efficient mobile handsets, Professor Åkerman believes the new research will lead to new functionality on the devices. He uses the example of digital assistants such as Siri where, currently, all processing has to be done by remote servers because such processing-heavy work on a mobile handset is very energy-inefficient. However, if components could be made small enough, many hundreds of them would fit into a mobile handset enabling energy-efficient local processing and obviating the need for energy-guzzling servers. Under laboratory conditions, research scientist have been able to produce components so microscopically small that they are “less than the size of a single bacterium.”

 
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MDhere

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In don't have my laptop fired up cause it's 11pm here but on my mobile i can see just over 1mil at sell of $1.2 is that a 1mil sell order, hope yet need it to buy a new yacht or something cause they may be flat out trying to fet that parcel back
 
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Baisyet

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In don't have my laptop fired up cause it's 11pm here but on my mobile i can see just over 1mil at sell of $1.2 is that a 1mil sell order, hope yet need it to buy a new yacht or something cause they may be flat out trying to fet that parcel back
Yes it is 1mil i was surprised as well.
 
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Latest rumours on the Apple Car and it seems like they are having issues getting anyone to help manufacture it.

I think this writer must be ManChild. In this one article he has managed to link Apple to every vehicle manufacturer in the world and shown they have employed people in every discipline necessary to build their own car in a secret development facility while at the same time possibly agreeing with high volume producers to small scale producers to either mass produce or not a completly autonomous vehicle without a steering wheel or peddles or with a steering wheel or peddles that is ultra high end in limited numbers or not by 2025 or later. 😂

My opinion only DYOR
FF

AKIDA BALLISTA
 
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MDhere

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Yes it is 1mil i was surprised as well.
from what little i can see noone sellimg under 1.23 and very little and a few last minute shenanigans from desperation by the looks of it. let's see if it gets pulled
 
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Bravo

If ARM was an arm, BRN would be its biceps💪!
WHAT?


Extract


“WITINMEM is breaking new ground with Microchip’s memBrain solution for addressing the compute-intensive requirements of real-time AI speech at the network edge based on advanced neural network models,” said Shaodi Wang, CEO of WITINMEM. “We were the first to develop a computing-in-memory chip for audio in 2019, and now we have achieved another milestone with volume production of this technology in our ultra-low-power neural processing SoC that streamlines and improves speech processing performance in intelligent voice and health products.”

“We are excited to have WITINMEM as our lead customer and applaud the company for entering the expanding AI edge processing market with a superior product using our technology,” said Mark Reiten, vice president of the license division at SST. “The WITINMEM SoC showcases the value of using memBrain technology to create a single-chip solution based on a computing-in-memory neural processor that eliminates the problems of traditional processors that use digital DSP and SRAM/DRAM-based approaches for storing and executing machine learning models.”


Microchip’s memBrain neuromorphic memory product is optimised to perform VMM for neural networks. It allows battery-powered and deeply-embedded edge processors to provide the highest possible AI inference performance per watt. This is achieved by storing the neural model weights as values in the memory array and utilising the memory array as the neural compute element. The result is 10 to 20 times lower power consumption than alternative approaches and lower overall processor BOM costs because external DRAM and NOR are not needed.

 
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D

Deleted member 118

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I think this writer must be ManChild. In this one article he has managed to link Apple to every vehicle manufacturer in the world and shown they have employed people in every discipline necessary to build their own car in a secret development facility while at the same time possibly agreeing with high volume producers to small scale producers to either mass produce or not a completly autonomous vehicle without a steering wheel or peddles or with a steering wheel or peddles that is ultra high end in limited numbers or not by 2025 or later. 😂

My opinion only DYOR
FF

AKIDA BALLISTA
Lol
 
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newpunta

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1,028,000 ........... funny bizzznes
 
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Baisyet

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from what little i can see noone sellimg under 1.23 and very little and a few last minute shenanigans from desperation by the looks of it. let's see if it gets pulled
yes lets see what happens.
 
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MDhere

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yes lets see what happens.
Boom swallowed whole at one min after open lol bye bye shares to happy new owner :) next fill up station 1.25 i put 10k up at 1.32 to buy my daughter a car when i get to Melbourne in 6 days time for an early 30th birthday present. let's see if she gets car or not while im there for a week.
if not she will have to wait til April her actual birthday. :)
 
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Baisyet

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Boom swallowed whole at one min after open lol bye bye shares to happy new owner :)
wow that was so quick cant believe it dang.
 
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Dang Son

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Sorry to intrude on the NRL/Newtown discussion (Didn’t Singo fly over to Thailand straight away-I wonder why) but I have a worry about some of the newbies and forgotten soldiers of BRN on the HC site.
Yes everyone is out of it for legitimate reasons, however there is a bit of a concern.
The site-as most will have witnessed- is awash with all sorts of nonsense opinions and videos from the usual suspects; but even more so now.
The problem is there are a few heroic BRN holders (not me, I dont know enough) battling an avalanche of negativity and misinformation over there.
I invested in BRN originally because of the quality of information supplied by the people in HC who are now here. It was a major factor in holding during grim times.
Now I fear that any newbies and those having doubts will fall victim to the siren song of these types running their agendas unfettered.
Is there any way of supplying one post per day with real information over there which at least gives some respite from the constant fear mongering that will possibly affect investor sentiment?
We don’t want The Dean, Shareman et al creating the prevailing narrative and investors leave or potential investors shy away.
Yes it’s the individual investor’s decision but ironically it’s these retail investors who are being duped by the very people who purport to be acting in their interests.
Help is needed over there.
Back to the fox hole. Best I can do is throw in the odd sarcastic comment. Doug Piranha would be proud.
The fox is raiding our hen house while the ostrich buries its head in the sand 🥺
 
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MDhere

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The fox is raiding our hen house while the ostrich buries its head in the sand 🥺
lol @1Paddle i know what you mean poor ol sunnyboy over there is getting a wallop of his own medicine so i am sure that newbies will read his comments then others and figure out that sunnyboy is a tosser. Hopefully people will have down there research before believing HC. if they haven't then they shouldn't be investing in the first place.
 
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Xray1

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Is it my just my imagination that Tony D has gone very quite of late ...... I wonder if Sean has imposed a cone of silence stance.
 
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Is it my just my imagination that Tony D has gone very quite of late ...... I wonder if Sean has imposed a cone of silence stance.
I still get replies but usually accompanied by apologies for taking so long and that he is under the pump with the volume of work and the replies are usually well outside normal business hours with the last one being last Sunday.

Insatiable demand and explosive sales can only come at a cost to the time available to existing staff numbers.

Having suffered explosive growth a couple of times current staffing is never enough you are always playing catch-up hence the prediction of 100 employees by years end.

The hours Tony Dawe is working and the comment that staff are working 14,15 hour days corroborates what has been stated about where Brainchip is headed. Exciting times.

My opinion only DYOR
FF

AKIDA BALLISTA
 
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