BRN Discussion Ongoing

[Dhm]

BrainChip IP going to the US with MegaChips!



“MegaChips, which recently announced its emergence into the U.S. custom ASIC market, will now leverage BrainChip Akida™ IP to provide U.S. customers with innovative applications across a wide variety of applications, such as consumer tech, telecom/network, industrial and automotive.”

BrainChip on LinkedIn: MegaChips Forms Strategic Partnership with BrainChip - Partnership…

MegaChips Forms Strategic Partnership with BrainChip - Partnership Provides Ultra-Low Power and High-Performance Edge AI Solutions for ASIC Customers…

www.linkedin.com

Former Agreement:
https://cdn-api.markitdigital.com/a...access_token=83ff96335c2d45a094df02a206a39ff4

I looked over the earlier agreement dated 21st November compared to the latest one and there are minor differences.

Formally the agreement was over 4 years and the current agreement doesn't mention a time period.

Formally Brainchip 'Partnered with MegaChips' whilst the current agreement says 'Forms Strategic Partnership'. Maybe just semantics.

The former agreement says that 'Brainchip WILL receive an upfront licence fee', whereas this agreement doesn't mention the fee. So I imagine the fee has been already been paid. It didn't seem to be in the last 4C so perhaps we can look forward to the 4C covering this current quarter.

The current announcement mentions Brainchip helping MegaChips achieving the goal of becoming the 'leading US ASIC supplier' so maybe MegaChips suddenly realises they have partnered with a UNICORN.

The other differences are in line with our improvements over the last six months. Phrases like 'offering unprecedented products' and 'industry propelling perspective' only gets me more excited.

 

[Evermont]

Wouldn't complicate it @Dhm per my understanding they are simply formalising the relationship with MegaChips US and their expansion into the local market. The earlier Licence Agreement related primarily to Japan as at that point they had not entered into the US.

 

[Evermont]

Also worth noting this was a MegaChips release, not BrainChip.

 

[Foxdog]

Apple car project executive jumps ship after nine months​

An expert on autonomous vehicles has left Apple for Luminar, the latest in a string of departures from the tech giant.

---

Ben Zachariah
12:5026 May 2022
2comments

11shares

View 1 images

A senior executive from Apple has departed the tech giant after less than a year in the job to join a US-based autonomous vehicle systems specialist.
Christopher CJ Moore previously worked on Tesla’s Autopilot semi-autonomous driving systems before moving to Apple in August, reportedly to work on its electric car project.
The news agency Bloomberg reports Mr Moore has now moved to Luminar Technology – a company developing lidar-based autonomous driving systems.

Mr Moore is the latest in a line of experts who have reportedly walked away from the secretive Apple car project over the past two years – after Apple tried to bolster its team with engineers from the likes of Ford and Rivian.
In January, Luminar announced it had entered a partnership with Mercedes-Benz to help develop autonomous-driving systems for the German car giant.
It is understood Luminar is also working with Volvo, Daimler Trucks, and Chinese conglomerate SAIC.

Apple is yet to make any official announcement about its electric autonomous car project, but a number of leaks from other car companies suggest the tech firm is looking for an automotive partner to help manufacture the vehicle.

​

Ben Zachariah
Journalist

Ben Zachariah is an experienced writer and motoring journalist from Melbourne, having worked in the automotive industry for more than 15 years. Ben was previously an interstate truck driver and completed his MBA in Finance in early 2021. He is considered an expert in the area of classic car investment.


interesting! Is this another avenue for Brainchip , Obviously Apple Car play needs some help.

DYOR

I might be wrong but this article has given me the impression that some of the larger, more established tech giants (Apple in this case) are not nimble enough to change direction as new technologies appear. If they haven't actually invented it themselves then they will continue to lag behind, and arrogantly ignore that change is required to survive. It hints at a reluctance to accept change that wasn't initiated by them. Perhaps this is why highly qualified personnel (executives no less) are gravitating towards innovative tech and smaller companies who's ideas herald a new era - quite likely they see the writing on the wall.

If MegaChips, Brainchip and partners are on the cusp of disrupting the established, multi-million dollar players, and it is looking increasingly likely that this is the case, then no wonder such secrecy surrounds the deals and agreements being made by BRN.

The movements of key executive personnel is more significant, in my opinion, than any announcements we have so far received.

'Watch the financials and watch the execs'

 

[Falling Knife]

John Deer targets automation
"Autonomous machinery is where Deere is placing its bet as artificial intelligence becomes more integrated in farming. Its self-driving 8R tillage tractor will be the latest addition to the company's algorithm-enabled offerings when the green machines go on sale in the fall."

Obviously they wont be the only ones with this focus "as artificial intelligence becomes more integrated in farming."

 

[Bravo]

i dont think we really heard much from Megachips in November 2021 regarding the partnership so now that its 'formal', maybe this is their way of announcing it.

Also another thought... Megachips partnering with Quadric only last week.. not sure if this has something to do with them announcing the 'partnership' with BRN now..

Hi Potato, this article from the 26th of April, links BrianChip and Quadric in MegaChips AI Partner Program. It says here that "the AI Partner Program appears to build on two key technology partnerships that MegaChips recently established". One is with BrainChip and the other is with Quadric.

MegaChips takes aim at edge AI in US with ASIC program​

Japanese ASIC provider rolling out AI partner program to get around in-house expertise​

Dan Robinson Tue 26 Apr 2022 // 13:30 UTC

---

Japanese ASIC provider MegaChips is rolling out an AI partner program pitched as allowing organizations to deliver AI capabilities without requiring in-house experts. It is also expanding into the US market to sell its full ASIC design services to American tech companies.

MegaChips is a global fabless chip company that claims to work closely with its customers' design teams to deliver the tech they need in silicon. The AI Partner Program marks the entry of the business into the global edge AI chips market, estimated to be worth $9 billion in 2020, claiming there is growing demand for embedded AI solutions.

For edge AI chips, think of silicon designed to power devices at the network edge, where processing of data may need an instant reaction, power may be limited, and sending all the data back to the cloud or a datacenter for processing may be costly in terms of bandwidth and add latency.

According to MegaChips, the AI Partner Program benefits include access to a dedicated team of engineers to identify the best ways to implement desired AI functions, custom "proof of concept" demonstrations, and optimization of the complete system. It also eliminates any need for customers to have their own silicon implementation teams, it said.

The AI Partner Program appears to build on two key technology partnerships that MegaChips recently established. One is with BrainChip Holdings Ltd, an Australian AI firm, to acquire its edge-based AI solution, BrainChip Akida, a neuromorphic processor.

"By providing Akida's on-chip learning and ultra-low power Edge AI capabilities as an integrated technology in MegaChips ASIC solutions, we are able to bring practical, cutting-edge capabilities to the edge that ensure power efficiency without compromising accuracy," said BrainChip VP of Worldwide Sales and Marketing Rob Telson.

The other is a stake in Quadric io, a US firm that has developed an AI inference processor for edge devices that integrates AI and DSP (digital signal processing) functions, enabling it to accelerate all the steps involved in processing data from a variety of sensors, according to the firm.

MegaChips also announced it is now offering its full-service ASIC solution in the US, which director of business development, Douglas Fairbairn, said is an opportunity to take its edge AI nous stateside.

At the other end of the scale, chip designer Esperanto Technologies recently showcased a processor with more than 1,000 general-purpose RISC-V cores, aimed at delivering faster and more energy-efficient AI inference performance.
The Register reported last year how AI chip startups are focusing on performance-per-dollar and energy efficiency as their competitive selling point against solutions using general-purpose processors. ®

MegaChips aims at the edge with AI Partner Program for ASICs

Japanese ASIC provider rolling out AI partner program to get around in-house expertise

www.theregister.com

 

[Diogenese]

Apple car project executive jumps ship after nine months​

An expert on autonomous vehicles has left Apple for Luminar, the latest in a string of departures from the tech giant.

---

Ben Zachariah
12:5026 May 2022
2comments

11shares

View 1 images

A senior executive from Apple has departed the tech giant after less than a year in the job to join a US-based autonomous vehicle systems specialist.
Christopher CJ Moore previously worked on Tesla’s Autopilot semi-autonomous driving systems before moving to Apple in August, reportedly to work on its electric car project.
The news agency Bloomberg reports Mr Moore has now moved to Luminar Technology – a company developing lidar-based autonomous driving systems.

Mr Moore is the latest in a line of experts who have reportedly walked away from the secretive Apple car project over the past two years – after Apple tried to bolster its team with engineers from the likes of Ford and Rivian.
In January, Luminar announced it had entered a partnership with Mercedes-Benz to help develop autonomous-driving systems for the German car giant.
It is understood Luminar is also working with Volvo, Daimler Trucks, and Chinese conglomerate SAIC.

Apple is yet to make any official announcement about its electric autonomous car project, but a number of leaks from other car companies suggest the tech firm is looking for an automotive partner to help manufacture the vehicle.

​

Ben Zachariah
Journalist

Ben Zachariah is an experienced writer and motoring journalist from Melbourne, having worked in the automotive industry for more than 15 years. Ben was previously an interstate truck driver and completed his MBA in Finance in early 2021. He is considered an expert in the area of classic car investment.


interesting! Is this another avenue for Brainchip , Obviously Apple Car play needs some help.

DYOR

Luminar uses LiDaR and camera images to "track" moving objects which become hidden by another object.


US10491885B1 Post-processing by lidar system guided by camera information

The system starts at 222 and lidar capture is activated 224 in a lidar system. The lidar captures data from which a point cloud may be generated. At the same time camera capture 226 is performed and object classification 228 is performed on the camera capture at the camera system, for example in the image processor that is configured with an object classification system.

The classified objects 228 and the lidar points are brought together in, for example, a modeling processor that is configured to correlate 230 points of classified objects to points of the lidar point cloud.

At 224 the activated lidar system captures return data. In some instances the lidar will perform a sequence of e.g. horizontal scans of emitted laser pulses from the lidar and then capture any reflected return pulses on a imaging sensor through the full field of regard. The lidar then generates a frame of 3D return data based on a completed sequence of scans. This may be in the form of a lidar point cloud of 3D positions of returned reflections or in any other format.

[0053] At about the same time, the visible light camera system at 226 also captures frames that represent the same scene or an overlapping scene. These frames may be in the form of a 2D bitmap of color and pixel position or any other suitable format and are provided to an image processor or some other processing system to classify objects in the camera frames at 228 . The camera data and the lidar data may then be combined, for example by a modeling processor configured to update 236 the non-occluded portions of the grid. This may be done, for example as shown in FIG. 6.

[0054] For the occluded portions of the grid, the modeling processor or another component of the system may also correlate 230 lidar returns to classified objects. Objects that are moving into and out of occluded spaces in the grid may be identified 232 as they move in the 3D model using the classifications and correlations. The occluded portions of the grid may then be updated 234 based on estimations of the behavior and size of the objects.

[0055] In this example, the object classifications in the 3D model are used to account for objects and spaces that may be temporarily occluded by other classified moving objects. For example, if part of a vehicle is observed while the remainder is occluded by an intervening object, the system can reasonably extrapolate that the unseen portions of the vehicle are present behind the occlusion. If the approximate size of the vehicle is known based on the classification and the observed size in the point cloud, then the size of the unseen portions may also be estimated.

[0056] As an alternative, this system can be built so that the camera data is provided to the lidar system so that the lidar system does the generating and modeling of the surrounding scene. The camera's contribution can be limited to the identification of candidate objects to be tracked as a group by the lidar system.

Akida could be used for the object classification task 228, and possibly for the correlation task 230.

 

[MrNick]

“By MegaChips partnering with BrainChip we can deliver customers highly sought-after edge AI solutions and expedite time to market,” said Douglas Fairbairn, Director of Business Development for MegaChips LSI USA. “Together we plan to develop innovative LSIs as the silicon partner of BrainChip, helping take customers from ideation to silicon. This collaboration helps us achieve the goal of becoming the leading U.S. ASIC supplier for any customer looking to implement AI solutions at volume.”


Hi Sly,
Not sure if this is right but it seems we may have gone beyond just selling them an IP license and providing engineering support.

Ahhh, so BC's move away from silicon to a more IP model is now bolstered by having Megachips integrate BC IP into their silicon to be able to develop incredible solutions for their existing and developing client base. Much like almost every other 'partner' will do..... Because they can't afford not to! Ubiquity is just around the corner.

 

[FJ-215]

Ahhh, so BC's move away from silicon to a more IP model is now bolstered by having Megachips integrate BC IP into their silicon to be able to develop incredible solutions for their existing and developing client base. Much like almost every other 'partner' will do..... Because they can't afford not to! Ubiquity is just around the corner.

Still trying to put the pieces together. We know from the AGM that BRN is now only an IP company. Originally the plan was to sell chips up to volumes of around 1 million, for amounts above this BRN recommended going to an IP license. I could image that dealing with multiple smaller customers would put some strain on our engineering team. Better to partner with MegaChips and split the load for those customers.

All guesses from me, possibly way off the mark.

 

[Bravo]

@Dhm might need to send an email to these guys and give them the "heads up" since they believe that it will take up to 10 years for such on-device learning and inference to be operative. He-he-he!

 

[gex]

So you're telling me my chip is now a rare collectable?

you rippa

 

[Euks]

Random question time.....

So Megachips have signed a commercial agreement and now stated that are in a partnership with Brainchip...

Is it likely that companies we have announced partnerships with, for example arm and Nvisio will at some stage in the future sign commercial agreements similar to what we have seen with Megachips which i guess would then require an asx announcement as there would be money changing hands?

TGIF

 

[jtardif999]

Great article and hopefully Microsoft choose Brainchip for their NPU.
“And because we expect to see NPUs being built into most, if not all future computing devices, we’re going to make it easy for developers to leverage these new capabilities, by baking support for NPUs into the end-to-end Windows platform.”

The only thing it didn’t say was ubiquitous!

And yes potentially the right time and the right place.

I particularly liked Sean’s comment in the AGM when answering a question about competitors (paraphrasing) - choose competitors with NPUs based on traditional tech to eek out improvements of 5 - 10% or choose Akida to get 500 - 1000% performance improvement.

We don’t currently have any competition, the market will decide we are the way they have to go to be competitive. AIMO. Akida ubiquitous.

 

[mcm]

Random question time.....

So Megachips have signed a commercial agreement and now stated that are in a partnership with Brainchip...

Is it likely that companies we have announced partnerships with, for example arm and Nvisio will at some stage in the future sign commercial agreements similar to what we have seen with Megachips which i guess would then require an asx announcement as there would be money changing hands?

TGIF

I think you are right on the money. A commercial agreement as opposed to a partnership will have to result in an ASX announcement.

 

[Bravo]

Dear @Diogenese,

This patent for Apples new AR/VR device suggest it will be using spiking neural networks for deformable object tracking. Could this be Akida?

https://patents.google.com/patent/US20200273180A1/en

Deformable object tracking

Abstract
Various implementations disclosed herein include devices, systems, and methods that use event camera data to track deformable objects such as faces, hands, and other body parts. One exemplary implementation involves receiving a stream of pixel events output by an event camera. The device tracks the deformable object using this data. Various implementations do so by generating a dynamic representation of the object and modifying the dynamic representation of the object in response to obtaining additional pixel events output by the event camera. In some implementations, generating the dynamic representation of the object involves identifying features disposed on the deformable surface of the object using the stream of pixel events. The features are determined by identifying patterns of pixel events. As new event stream data is received, the patterns of pixel events are recognized in the new data and used to modify the dynamic representation of the object.

 

[mcm]

I think you are right on the money. A commercial agreement as opposed to a partnership will have to result in an ASX announcement.

I should add ... this pullback has been a godsend. What an opportunity to buy more at bargain prices. To think the price ran up to over $2 on the back of the Mercedes association. Now we have the likes of ARM, Nviso and Megachips publicly trumpeting their association with BRN. You want validation AKIDA is a world beater ... we've had it recently in spades. Those selling at current prices are playing Russian Roulette imo. Nice for us who want to do some final topping up.

 

[Rise from the ashes]

Sigh..... All this action yet no announcement of world domination

 

[Rise from the ashes]

I should add ... this pullback has been a godsend. What an opportunity to buy more at bargain prices. To think the price ran up to over $2 on the back of the Mercedes association. Now we have the likes of ARM, Nviso and Megachips publicly trumpeting their association with BRN. You want validation AKIDA is a world beater ... we've had it recently in spades. Those selling at current prices are playing Russian Roulette imo. Nice for us who want to do some final topping up.

Oh dear. Please don't mention buying at cheaper prices

 

[White Horse]

The release today seems to add nothing to the November 2021 partnership news releases and states within itself “formally announced a strategic partnership signed late last year.”

That announcement called it a “partnership” also:

News Releases | MegaChips Corporation

Please check MegaChips latest information and new releases.

megachips.com

So this recent media activity begs to ask:
What is the reason for rehashing this same info now?
Is this just marketing? Which I’m ok with BTW.
Is this a formalisation of the partnership?

I’m thinking/hoping, maybe the later, as the November announcement never led to BrainChip adding MegaChips to their partners page. So as I said above, I’d love to see that now happen.

Or maybe MegaChips is rightfully shouting out and reminding the world of #me2

Hi Sly,
This latest announcement seems to be more USA centric.
USA director Douglas Fairbairn's name is used instead of Mr. Tetsuo Hikawa of Japan.
Great advertising for both parties.

 

[chapman89]

Hi everybody, I’ve been in contact with Tim the CEO of NVISO and there will be another demo here in Sydney ourisde The Glenmore Hotel in The Rocks.

It’s between 4-6pm today, the demo will be shown in a brand new AMG Mercedes G wagon, I highly recommend those who are in Sydney to attend it and see the demo live for themselves.

You just have to rock up, you’ll see the car there.