This one was shared a couple of times already but I want to highlight it one last time. Since Lou told us years ago that a South Korean company has spent possibly more time in validating the technology than BRN itself we have speculated a lot who it could have been.
Samsung is known for exploring neural processing units. They’ve started exploring the idea behind this technology publicly in 2019, maybe earlier. The results are various chip designs and updated ones named “Exynos” which include an ai-enabled NPU.
Here —>
https://semiconductor.samsung.com/e...aunched the premium,previous model (the 9810).
Since Samsung is able to design and produce their ships themselves instead of relying on TSMC or other manufacturers it seems only logical that they’re able to come up with different approaches and designs. There’s more room for trial and error. Processes are quicker costs lower. Up until now they did not primarily focus on energy consumption but rather performance. At least publicly. They rather highlighted the performance of the entire chipset of every model that I’ve found so far.
Now comes into play the roadmap from Samsung for 2024. This roadmap perfectly aligns with all the facts, markets and material from BRN that’s out there for us to see. Buzz words and use cases sound very much alike from what we’re hearing from our management team.
From the Samsung roadmap for 2024:
- The company plans to empower its home appliances with generative AI capabilities, ensuring more intuitive interactions between users and their devices. Consequently, Samsung plans to equip its home appliances with an ultra-low-power Neural Processing Unit (NPU) chipset. This chipset will play a vital role in facilitating the efficient functioning of generative AI, ensuring a harmonious and user-friendly experience.
- The generative AI technology will not be confined to a single facet but will encompass voice recognition, visual processing, and display functionality. “Generative AI technologies will be applied to voice, vision and display,”
-Samsung’s vision is to have home appliances that deeply understand user behaviour and preferences, resulting in context-aware and intelligent responses
- The AI-driven enhancements won’t be confined to a select range of devices; they will be widespread across Samsung’s appliance lineup, covering premium and entry-level products. The same can be seen in Samsung’s operating system, ‘Tizen,’ which will receive substantial upgrades. Tizen, optimized for voice recognition and video processing, will be strengthened with AI capabilities.
And most importantly. For the first time energy consumption seems to be one of the key aspect in the chipset.
- Further,
Samsung is engineering an energy-efficient chipset, addressing
smart homedevices’ growing complexity and data intensity. The aim is to keep power consumption to a minimum, targeting an impressive goal of less than 0.1 watts of energy utilization over 24 hours for AI-enabled appliances.
Article —>
https://www.koreatechtoday.com/samsung-unveils-2024-generative-ai-roadmap-for-home-appliances/
Now why does the timeframe align? Because we were told that the first generation wasn’t robust enough and too narrow in its use case. If there’s one South Korean company that has tested Akida already, more thoroughly than BRN its part of the early access partners. These partners were the first which got access for the second gen. The use cases different entry points for their products along with the overall alignment with their phrasing seems like a very hot lead to me. Don’t forget that home appliances were one hot topic already 1-2 years ago.