Hi Terri,
Ida No.
I haven't seen much about BRN/SiFive since the original April 2022 announcement.
However, here are some benchmarks for comparison with Pico:
https://brainchip.com/sifive-and-brainchip-partner-to-demo-ip-compatibility/
SiFive and BrainChip Partner to Demo IP Compatibility
By Sally Ward-Foxton
April 20, 2022
SiFive and BrainChip have partnered to show their IP is compatible in SoC designs for embedded artificial intelligence (AI). The companies have demonstrated BrainChip’s neuromorphic processing unit (NPU) IP working alongside SiFive’s RISC–V host processor IP.
Brainchip’s NPU processor IP, the basis for its Akida chip, is a neuromorphic processor designed to accelerate spiking neural networks. This IP can be used to analyze inputs from most sensor types, including cameras, to provide ultra–low power analysis in real–time applications.
A recent BrainChip demo showed its Akida chip in a vehicle, detecting the driver, recognizing the driver’s face, and identifying their voice simultaneously.
Keyword spotting required 600 µW,
facial recognition needed 22 mW, and
the visual wake–word inference used to detect the driver was 6–8 mW.
Read on at EETimes
https://www.eetimes.com/sifive-and-brainchip-partner-to-demo-ip-compatibility/
SiFive and BrainChip Partner to Demo IP Compatibility
By
Sally Ward-Foxton 04.20.2022
...
J
ones (Chris Jones, vice president, product at SiFive
) described work done so far as the “tip of the iceberg,” adding that the two companies have so far demonstrated compatibility of BrainChip’s IP with SiFive’s RISC–V architecture. The companies will work together on an ongoing basis to further integrate software and hardware IP.
“We have ambitious plans going forward,” Jones said. “SiFive has made great strides in the last year or so, bringing vector processing to market now that [vector processing] has found its niche in AI and image signal processing.”
Part of SiFive’s plan is to build an ecosystem of AI accelerator IP providers whose products are compatible with its host processor IP.
“Our relationship with BrainChip is in no way exclusive,” Jones said. “BrainChip is the first partner we’ve gone public with, but we’re talking to many other players in this space.”
While BrainChip is the company’s first hardware IP partner, SiFive has design wins for its host processor IP, including data center AI accelerator company Tenstorrent.
TENNS was a thing at that time, so the reference to integrating
software and hardware IP has more resonance in retrospect. I thought they may have just been talking about the BRN model library as "software", but we know there are other possibilities now.
Impementing software is far cheaper and less time consuming than hardware.