Hey
@TopCat, I reckon I’ve got exciting news to share! Keep your paws crossed that our sleuthing skills will soon be validated by an official announcement - I can already hear you happily purring away!
I only just found the time to watch the recorded CVPR 2023 Workshop presentations by Kynan Eng (CEO of iniVation) and Nandan Nayampally - they both have such wonderfully soothing voices, by the way.
The mosaic of conjecture we’ve both been creating over the past couple of weeks is almost complete; here are two more tiles to lay, one of them a shiny golden one.
While the videos’ tech content is way above my pay grade, both presentations were quite illuminating, nevertheless! Let me share with you what piqued my interest:
I first watched Kynan Eng’s talk on iniVation’s new Aeveon sensor:
The wallaby featured on the iniVation website must have hopped away and is now presumably roaming freely somewhere around Lake Zurich, as it didn’t make an appearance during the presentation. Instead, it had been substituted by a beautiful, iridescent hummingbird, legendary for its rapid wing beat, which is notoriously difficult to capture on regular camera without blurring.
Watch from 8 min onwards, where Kynan Eng starts to talk about
the new, soon-to-be released Aeveon sensor:
„What‘s important to note here is,
this is mainly digital. We‘ve moved quite a distance away from the analog circuit in current DVS pixels…“
And from 10:45 min onwards: „
So the chip doesn’t exist, yet. We are getting very close to the first tape-out of it now, but because it is in digital, we are able to create an emulator for this, for the chip.”
Well, I immediately took a liking to the sound of “digital”, especially since Synsense, iniVation’s sister start-up and partner for their Speck SoC, is into analog SNNs, but it got even better, when I then listened to Nandan Nayampally’s virtual presentation (which explains why he was nowhere to be seen in the CVPR 2023 Workshop group photo - I had actually hoped to spot him next to the likes of Kynan Eng, Tobi Delbrück or André van Schaik, which could have hinted at the fact that he was in conversation with one of them just before the group photo was taken. Clever idea of mine, eh?!)
Just over a minute into the presentation, I couldn’t believe my ears: “
Let me start with the key technology changes that we are making to support our partners like Prophesee, iniVation and other folks that are building not only event-based solutions…”
WHAT???!!! My real-time auditory sensor processing DID get that right, didn’t it?! Listen for yourself and correct me if I’m wrong…
Did he really just let slip that iniVation is indeed a Brainchip partner?!
They obviously didn’t get listed under “partners” on the “Brainchip at a glance” presentation slide, as there hasn’t been any official announcement so far, but IMO this (unintentionally) revealing statement strongly supports our hypothesis.
Admittedly, it could have been a lapsus linguae, a disclosure of our Brainchip CMO’s secretly harboured wish of teaming up with iniVation, but honestly, how probable is that?! Much more likely it was an inadvertent divulgence in front of a small audience of computer vision researchers, plus the Aeveon sensor screams Akida, doesn’t it?
I suppose we’ll find out soon, as “we are getting very close to the first tape-out” of the new wonder chip.
My opinion only, DYOR.
The bus is fully packed with us worms waiting to turn over a new leaf
