Others have already commented on the fact that said Renesas MCU has an embedded Helium accelerator. I will leave the discussion on whether this indicates that Akida is likely not involved (as it would not be needed) or could be integrated nevertheless to more qualified posters, and would like to shift the focus to the “first one on Earth” remark, which I interpreted somewhat differently.
Just like
@Steve10, I believe Bernd Westhoff, Director of Microcontroller Product Marketing at Renesas - while doing his best in promoting the MCU with its instant AI experience they had just launched by the time this video at Embedded World 2023 was recorded (“the latest and greatest you can get right now”) - must have been very much aware of the fact that
the first time ever the Arm Cortex-M85 had been used in conjunction with AI was in space (so most likely NASA). (Mind you, I don’t have any proof of this, but to me this is the only way his reaction makes sense).
Hence, when the interviewer asked him out of the blue whether it was the first time that AI was on the Arm Cortex-M(85) (from 1:06 min), Bernd Westhoff couldn’t simply answer “yes“, as that statement would have been untrue. Instead, after instinctively replying with “no”, he somewhat awkwardly but also cleverly rephrased his answer and thus technically wasn’t lying when he subsequently stated that the Renesas MCU was the very first time any vendor “on Earth” had launched the first Arm Cortex-M85 + AI combo implemented on silicon. (Mental note: But not the first one floating around in the Universe).
So IMO “the first one on Earth” is meant to be understood quite literally as the first one on the planet sold to regular customers
(pick whatever view of our globe you fancy most), as opposed to the first one ever developed, as Bernd Westhoff could not truthfully claim that Renesas were the ultimate pioneers on a universal scale marrying the Cortex-M85 core with AI. We can only speculate as to why he didn’t mention who on earth had beaten Renesas “in the Universe”, but I reckon he didn’t have any alien
Arm customers in mind, when he said “I mean, come on, this is the only one on Earth!” (from 7:57 min)
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