BRN Discussion Ongoing

[Bravo]

We can 100% exclude that the 2020 NASA SBIR proposal which featured Akida has anything to do with NASA’s Mars 2020 mission and the Perseverance Mars Rover, given the fact that it embarked on its voyage to the Red Planet on July 30, 2020 (hence the mission name!) and landed on the Martian surface on February 18, 2021…

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Apart from the fact that the timelines just don’t match - Perseverance left Planet Earth 4.5 years ago, the same year the SBIR proposal was published, while BrainChip celebrated Akida being first launched into space on March 4, 2024 (in ANT61’s Brain) - the 2020 SBIR proposal itself clearly indicates it is out of the question that it could have anything to do with the Perseverance Mars Rover’s autonomous navigation system: the research project relates to TRL (Technology Readiness Level) 1-2, which is considered very basic and speculative research. I’ll leave it up to you to figure out what TRL would be required for any mission-critical technology destined for Mars…

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Technology Readiness Levels - NASA

Technology Readiness Levels (TRL) are a type of measurement system used to assess the maturity level of a particular technology. Each technology project is

www.nasa.gov

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Well, something must be ongoing in relation to "Mars2020 Rover" because it is listed on NASA's 2024 updated inventory, which is the reason why I posted it.

The article includes a link to the full inventory which describes the Stage of System as "in production".

If you feel this information is incorrect, you can contact NASA"s Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer, David Salvagnini, who put the list together.

​

 

[Xray1]

I bet Nimble AI’s project coordinator Xabier Iturbe, Senior Research Engineer at IKERLAN (Basque Country, Spain), will be very pleased to hear about this new offering by BrainChip and will keep his fingers crossed that the same form factor option will be made available for the AKD1500 soon.

Today’s announcement of AKD1000 now being offered on the M.2 form factor reminded me of a post (whose author sadly made up his mind to leave the forum months ago) I had meant to reply to for ages…



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Hi @AI_Inquirer,

what a shame you decided to leave TSE last August - miss your contributions!
Maybe you still happen to hang around, though, reading in stealth - that’s why I am addressing you anyway.

Thank’s for reaching out to Xabier Iturbe, whose reply you seem to have misunderstood at the time: The way I see it, we haven’t been overshadowed or replaced by imec’s SENeCA chip, which was always going to be used alongside us resp. the Hailo Edge AI accelerator.

Have a look at the slightly updated illustration and project description of the Nimble AI neuromorphic 3D vision prototype I had posted in May 2024:

https://thestockexchange.com.au/threads/brn-discussion-ongoing.1/post-424893



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The Nimble AI researchers were always planning to produce two different neuromorphic 3D vision prototypes based on the Prophesee IMX636 sensor manufactured by Sony, and both of them were going to use imec’s neuromorphic SENeCA chip for early perception: One will additionally have the AKD1500 as a neuromorphic processor to perform 3D perception inference. This will be benchmarked against another prototype utilising a non-neuromorphic Edge AI processor by Hailo (on an M.2 form factor).

This latter prototype has apparently been progressing well (not sure, however, whether Prophesee’s financial difficulties will now delay the 3 year EU-funded project which started in November 2022) as can be seen on their website (https://www.nimbleai.eu/technology/)…

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…as well as in this October 7, 2024 video:





As for the second prototype slated to utilise our technology, the Nimble AI researchers are hoping that BrainChip will ideally be offering the AKD1500 on an M.2 form factor - just like Hailo does and just like BrainChip does now (as of today) for the AKD1000.
I believe that’s what Xabier Iturbe was trying to tell you:

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Regards,
Frangipani

Frangipani ............ I totally agree with you, that it was a real loss for TSE to lose a very technically minded and informative poster like AI_Inquirer, who was more than happy to share his ongoing research and discussions with various other organisations where b
BrainChip had some kind of connection / affiliation with, but he was eventually push out from posting here, due mainly imo to the poor form and lack of respect shown here by other questionable posters.

 

[TECH]

Question...The 10 to 12 weeks time lag in shipping out the edge box tends to suggest to me at least the time period
is linked to the wafer process, I strongly expect that we have no AKD 1000 SoC's...if you listen carefully to what Sean
stated in the recent podcast when talking about VVDN, he said we supply AKD 1000 SoC's to them to fulfil any orders
they receive (in large volumes)...yes it's a guess, but 10/12 weeks isn't good enough in my opinion...we are obviously not
holding any stock whatsoever, or VVDN have us way down the food chain as far as production of said box's.

We all know the AI EDGE Box is just a vehicle to get people into discovering what the AKIDA suite of products can currently
offer, and it's not an earner as such, but promoting something, then in the same breath saying, wait for 10/12 weeks doesn't
sound very practical to my business brain...purely my opinion, neither company appears to be holding any stock ??

Tech.

 

[Space Cadet]

It isn't any secret that I am expecting something from Tata. Not sure where this is heading and haven't time to follow up as have to go to work. I'll put up what I have found. Not sure what it means for BRN. Was announced at CES.

https://www.tatatechnologies.com/en...-for-next-gen-software-defined-vehicles-sdvs/

This is a link to Telechips current product. They do mention neural processing so more research to do when have the time.

https://www.telechips.com/view/technology/prod03

SC

 

[DingoBorat]

Question...The 10 to 12 weeks time lag in shipping out the edge box tends to suggest to me at least the time period
is linked to the wafer process, I strongly expect that we have no AKD 1000 SoC's...if you listen carefully to what Sean
stated in the recent podcast when talking about VVDN, he said we supply AKD 1000 SoC's to them to fulfil any orders
they receive (in large volumes)...yes it's a guess, but 10/12 weeks isn't good enough in my opinion...we are obviously not
holding any stock whatsoever, or VVDN have us way down the food chain as far as production of said box's.

We all know the AI EDGE Box is just a vehicle to get people into discovering what the AKIDA suite of products can currently
offer, and it's not an earner as such, but promoting something, then in the same breath saying, wait for 10/12 weeks doesn't
sound very practical to my business brain...purely my opinion, neither company appears to be holding any stock ??

Tech.

Have a whisper to your little birdies, Tech and see if you can work out what's going on..

I remember an email of Tony Dawe's, which said, it was hoped that demand was such, that VVDN, would place an order for chips (hey just my recollection)..

You'ld think, that we would've had to have gotten TSMC, to produce another run by now?..(we still have production slots allocated?)..

There's 2 chips per Edge Box, 5 in the Bascom Hunter thingo (although genuinely low volume) and now this M.2 form factor, that's supposed to be the size of a chewy? (isn't the AKD1000 physically bigger than that to begin with? Maybe it's using AKD1500, which is still AKIDA 1.0 IP or they've already produced AKD1000, in a smaller process size @Diogenese?)..

 

[7für7]

Me, imagining what the stock price will look like after another day at CES without any major announcements, while telling myself, “It won’t be that bad.”

 

[DingoBorat]

Have a whisper to your little birdies, Tech and see if you can work out what's going on..

I remember an email of Tony Dawe's, which said, it was hoped that demand was such, that VVDN, would place an order for chips (hey just my recollection)..

You'ld think, that we would've had to have gotten TSMC, to produce another run by now?..(we still have production slots allocated?)..

There's 2 chips per Edge Box, 5 in the Bascom Hunter thingo (although genuinely low volume) and now this M.2 form factor, that's supposed to be the size of a chewy? (isn't the AKD1000 physically bigger than that to begin with? Maybe it's using AKD1500, which is still AKIDA 1.0 IP or they've already produced AKD1000, in a smaller process size @Diogenese?)..

"The AKD1000-powered boards can be plugged into the M.2 slot – around the size of a stick of gum, with a power budget of about 1 watt"

Unless the size reference, is just that of "the slot" it goes in, but that's a weird thing to mention..

 

[DingoBorat]

Me, imagining what the stock price will look like after another day at CES without any major announcements, while telling myself, “It won’t be that bad.”


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As long as it's not like this, 7...

 

[Boab]

"The AKD1000-powered boards can be plugged into the M.2 slot – around the size of a stick of gum, with a power budget of about 1 watt"

Unless the size reference, is just that of "the slot" it goes in, but that's a weird thing to mention..

No mention of Pico......which is less than a watt.

 

[DingoBorat]

No mention of Pico......which is less than a watt.

Pico, is much, much, much, much, much, less than a watt and will be going straight into a product.

Not "much" to "play with" there...

 

[7für7]

As long as it's not like this, 7...


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It depends how it will look like on the 10th January

 

[Shadow59]

It depends how it will look like on the 8th January

HI 7 today is the 9th

 

[7für7]

HI 7 today is the 9th

sorry i meant the 10th

 

[IloveLamp]

 

[HopalongPetrovski]

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Nice to see we are back in the target range. What!
The reserve bank governor will be happy.
Perhaps now she will release the hounds.

 

[entretec]

"The AKD1000-powered boards can be plugged into the M.2 slot – around the size of a stick of gum, with a power budget of about 1 watt"

Unless the size reference, is just that of "the slot" it goes in, but that's a weird thing to mention..

What is the M.2 Form Factor? - everything RF

M.2 is a specification for internally mounted computer expansion cards and associated connectors. It was originally known as the Next Generation Form Factor (NGFF) and wa

www.everythingrf.com

 

[Diogenese]

Looks like Rudy is a valuable employee adding to the value of our investment !

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Yes. Rudy is a co-inventor on the TENNs patents.

The reference to CUDA is interesting. This is Nvidia's in-house programming language ...

 

[Frangipani]

Well, something must be ongoing in relation to "Mars2020 Rover" because it is listed on NASA's 2024 updated inventory, which is the reason why I posted it.

The article includes a link to the full inventory which describes the Stage of System as "in production".

If you feel this information is incorrect, you can contact NASA"s Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer, David Salvagnini, who put the list together.

​

View attachment 75517

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The NASA FY24 AI Inventory (listing all use cases using AI tools developed in-house) was presumably updated in early January 2025 for the simple reason that two new AI use cases had been implemented in 2024, which were, however, totally unrelated to Perseverance’s autonomous navigation system.

Being an inventory, it means that all older (=pre-2024) AI use cases get listed, too (including those developed for the Mars 2020 Mission), so the list will get longer year by year.

I also took a screenshot of that same table earlier today:

Not sure why they haven’t updated all Mars 2020-related use cases to “In mission”*, but take a look at the “date implemented” column:

Enhanced Autonavigation for Perseverance Rover on Mars: July 1, 2020
Mars2020 Rover (Perseverance): 1 July 2020
Onboard Planner for Mars2020 Rover (Perseverance): 1 July 2020 (here it does say “in mission”)
(-> all implemented on the same day, shortly before the Perseverance Mars rover’s encapsulation, getting ready for the launch on July 30, 2020)

as well as
Perseverance Rover on Mars - Terrain Relative Navigation: 18 February 2021
(the day of the entry, descent and landing aka EDL on Mars)


*By the way, the very first use case named AEGIS is also listed as “in production” and its description has never been properly updated: “AEGIS enables intelligent targeting and data acquisition by planetary rovers (…) It is currently in use on the MSL mission to acquire data for the ChemCam instrument. It is planned for use in Spring of 2022 on the M2020 mission to acquire data for the SuperCam instrument.”


But back to your original post: You had highlighted the following on the 2019 NASA fact sheet about Mars 2020 and Perseverance…

… and tried to establish a connection between the 2020 SBIR I proposing to use Akida to increase the performance of NASA’s autonomous rovers “to allow for greater speeds” and Perseverance’s “new autonomous navigation system [that] will allow the rover to drive faster in challenging terrain”:

“What I thought of immediately was the 2020 SBIR, which I have posted below for your convenience, which described how AKIDA was to potentially be utilised to make autonomous rovers travel faster. So it occurred to me that this 2020 SBIR which AKIDA was featured in might be part of the whole "Mars2020 Rover" thingamajig.

I had a quick Google search under "Mars2020 Rover" and I found this NASA Fact Sheet from 2019. The second page states "A new autonomous navigation system will allow the rover to drive faster in challenging terrain", which 100% ties into the goals described in the 2020 SBIR!”



As mentioned earlier, the 2020 SBIR grant’s starting date was after Perseverance’s launch. So it could only ever be potentially relevant for future Mars rovers (once the research would have climbed up the TRL ladder, that is) - but such future missions will be carried out under a different name, not Mars 2020.

If I’m not mistaken, NASA’s next proposed Mars landing will be a joint mission with ESA called “The NASA-ESA Mars Sample Return” to return samples from the Martian surface to Earth, which are being collected and cached by Perseverance, but there won’t be any novel autonomously navigating rover involved, just two sample recovery helicopters (modeled on the Mars 2020 Mission helicopter Ingenuity (2021-2024) ) as a backup for Perseverance.

Correct me if I am wrong, but so far, we haven’t heard anything about a SBIR II phase of that Vorago Technologies (previously Silicon Space Technology Corporation) proposal with Jim Carlquist as principal investigator, and a search on NASA’s website didn’t yield any relevant results beyond said SBIR I CNN RNN project, for which BrainChip received a one-time payment of US$ 50,000 from NASA on 21 Dec 2020 according to
https://www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_AWD_80NSSC21P0633_8000_-NONE-_-NONE-

Can you provide any further information regarding the project’s current status?

 

[DingoBorat]

What is the M.2 Form Factor? - everything RF

M.2 is a specification for internally mounted computer expansion cards and associated connectors. It was originally known as the Next Generation Form Factor (NGFF) and wa

www.everythingrf.com

Cheers Entretec

So the M.2 2260 form factor, which we are using, is "22mm x 60mm" that's a decent stick of gum..

22mm² or a bit less, sounds about right, for AKD1000 in 28nm.

 

[IloveLamp]

Yes. Rudy is a co-inventor on the TENNs patents.

The reference to CUDA is interesting. This is Nvidia's in-house programming language ...