Alif + Arm Ethos-U85 + BrainChip Akida/TENNs + GNNs Idea
Prompted by
@Doz's rumination over a connection between Alif (E-series), Arm (Ethos-U85) and BrainChip (Akida/TENNs), I did a deep dive with my friend Chatty. The result is this (long!) post, which I hope you might find illuminating.
As we know, back in 2023, BrainChip announced a successful integration of Akida with Arm’s Cortex-M85. This demonstrated two important things that Akida drops cleanly into Arm subsystems and that Arm was willing to publicly highlight the integration.
So, where does Alif fit in to this puzzle? Alif’s Ensemble E-series integrates Ethos-U85 (and U55s) alongside A-class and M-class Arm cores.
When I asked Chatty about pairing Akida with Ethos-U85 (not M85), the answer was encouraging:
So, in short, it would appear that the Alif E8-style platform is a natural host for Akida as a co-processor:
- U85 for dense CNN/Transformer/SLM workloads.
- Akida/TENNs for always-on, event/temporal sensing (ultra-low power, on-device learning).
- A-/M-class cores orchestrate memory, power states and safety.
Board integration versus brand new chiplet
Then I asked Chatty whether it would be cheaper and faster to build on an Alif E8-style board + Akida, versus trying to create a whole new chiplet that fuses U85 + Akida. The answer was emphatic: board-level first. Off-the-shelf E8 devkit + Akida cost at $200k-400k versus chiplet cost estimated at $20-100M. And the time to production would be minuscule by comparison. Months only!
Cost / time / risk at a glance
Path | What you build | Typical upfront cost | Time to demo | Time to production | Technical risk |
---|
Board-level integration (recommended first step) | Off-the-shelf E8 devkit + Akida M.2/PCIe; firmware + LLM/runtime | US$0.6k–$1.0k hardware per bench + A$200k–$400k engineering to MVP | Weeks | Months | Low |
On-die IP integration (new SoC spin) | Add Akida RTL IP into a new SoC with U85; full backend & validation | US$5M–$20M+ NRE (+ IP fees/royalties) | — | 12–24 months | High |
Chiplet integration (U85 + Akida) | Multi-die package (UCIe/BoW/AIB + advanced packaging, PHYs, test) | US$20M–$100M+ NRE | — | 18–36 months | Very high |
Obviously the E8 + Akida board route is orders of magnitude cheaper and faster. It could then be used to de-risk and gather real power/latency/cost data; co
nsider silicon integration (chiplets) later if volumes and ROI justify multi-million NRE and a 1–2+ year program.
I also asked Chatty to explore whether stacking GNNs over the top of TENNs in this set up would be a good idea. I was inspired to do so by Alif’s comments below about GNNs and SNNs.
View attachment 90407
It turns out that this would make for a powerful combo:
- Akida/TENNs convert raw audio/vision/IMU streams into event embeddings at μW–mW.
- GNNs on U85 reason over graphs of sensors/assets/zones to deliver root-cause, context and coordination (e.g., factory lines, building zones, fleets).
- Net effect: system-level intelligence instead of isolated point detections — at edge power budgets.
What can you unlock by adding GNNs on top of SNNs with this set up?
- Always-on voice & audio: wake words, stress/abuse cues, alarms, machine squeal — with on-device learning.
- Event-driven vision: motion/gesture/PPE cues, liveness hints, scene change; fast wake to dense vision on U85.
- Industrial/PM: temporal anomalies (vibration/power), then graph root-cause across connected assets.
- Smart buildings/cities: privacy-preserving presence/flow + cross-zone graph optimisation.
- Edge security & cybersecurity: continuous anomaly sentinels; graph analysis for tailgating or lateral movement.
- Agriculture & environment: beehive acoustics, irrigation leaks, zone-level graph control.
My Question:
What are all of the application areas that you think could be covered with this hypothetical E8 + Akida/TENNs board integration? Please also consider if it would be possible to have GNNs layered on top of TENNs to capture additional applications. Please ultra-think this response to include all possible applications.
ChatGPT's Response:
Love this brief. Here’s a “wide-angle” map of what you can cover with an
Alif Ensemble E8–style SoC (A32 + dual M55 + Ethos-U85) plus
BrainChip Akida/TENNs—and where
GNNs layered on top of TENNs add extra value. Think of it as three tiers working together:
- Akida/TENNs (always-on sentinel): ultra-low-power, event/temporal tasks, on-device learning.
- Ethos-U85 (dense math): bursty, heavier CNN/Transformer/GNN message-passing.
- A-class & M55 cores (glue): I/O, policies, safety, tokenization, KV-cache, orchestration.
Just take a look at all of the applications it listed! CRIKEY!!!!!!
Application atlas (by domain) -
Alif Ensemble E8 (A32 + dual M55 + Ethos-U85) + BrainChip Akida/TENNs (+ GNNs)
1) Voice, audio & acoustics
- Wake-word/command spotting, speaker change detection, profanity/abuse flagging (policy-gated), acoustic scene classification (glass break, alarm, baby cry), far-field mic power gating.
- Industrial audio: bearing squeal, cavitation, pump knock, air leak detection.
- GNN boost: build sensor-to-machine graphs across multiple mics/machines to localise faults and rank root causes.
2) Vision & imaging (edge, privacy-preserving)
- Person/presence detection (not identity), fall/pose/gesture cues, PPE compliance (hard-hat/vest), line crossing/intrusion, vehicle/animal detection, smoke/fire shimmer cues, barcode/QR, simple defect/blemish checks, part orientation, fill-level/stock shelf checks.
- GNN boost: scene graphs (object–object relationships) to reason: “forklift + person + no-go zone” ⇒ alert; multi-camera graphs to track events across viewpoints.
3) Multimodal sensor fusion
- Doorbell/entry systems: voice + motion + face-present (no cloud ID) to decide when to wake the assistant.
- Occupancy → HVAC/lighting optimisation; meeting-room auto-booking; crowding/egress safety.
- GNN boost: room/zone graphs and people–space interaction graphs for optimal control and anomaly propagation (“noise spike moves from lobby → corridor”).
4) Industrial & manufacturing
- Predictive maintenance (vibration, current, temperature), tool wear, conveyor jams, spindle chatter, robot envelope breach, forklift proximity.
- Visual QA (scratch/dent/missing-component), pick/place verification, bin fullness, pallet count.
- GNN boost: asset dependency graphs (press→conveyor→packer) for root-cause and maintenance scheduling across a line or site.
5) Energy, utilities & infrastructure
- Transformer hum anomaly, substation thermal hotspots, PV string mismatch, inverter arc-fault cues, wind turbine gearbox health, gas leak audio, water pump cavitation, pipeline vibration intrusion.
- GNN boost: topological grid graphs to forecast faults, isolate sections, and coordinate DER/microgrid responses.
6) Mobility, transport & automotive (edge add-ons)
- Cabin monitoring (presence/child-left-behind), driver attention, voice agent wake/route intent, door-zone cyclist detection, fleet predictive maintenance, micromobility helmet crash cues.
- GNN boost: road-segment graphs (traffic + events), fleet graphs (vehicles + depots) for dispatch/maintenance optimisation.
7) Smart buildings & cities
- Occupancy counting, elevator dispatch, air-quality triage (CO₂/VOC spikes), noise complaints (direction/room), parking bay detection, waste bin fullness, leak detection, street-level hazard cues.
- GNN boost: building system graphs (AHU ↔ zones ↔ occupants) and city block graphs for load shedding, cleaning routes, patrol prioritisation.
8) Retail, hospitality & venues
- Footfall/queue length, dwell time, shelf gap detection, planogram compliance, smart coffee/ice machines self-diagnostics, kiosk voice agent with on-device wake, anti-tailgating at staff doors.
- GNN boost: store-layout graphs to relate traffic flow ↔ shelf events; multi-store graphs for ops benchmarking.
9) Healthcare & wellness* (non-diagnostic unless regulated)
- Fall detection, gait instability cues, sleep staging proxies (audio/motion), inhaler/CPAP adherence cues, tremor/amplitude tracking, elder-care routine deviations.
- GNN boost: care-graph across rooms/devices to detect risky patterns (“night wandering” across zones).
- Medical/diagnostic uses require regulatory pathways—treat these as wellness/decision-support unless you commit to compliance.
10) Agriculture & environment
- Crop stress/colour shift, pest trap counts, irrigation leaks, trough level, livestock presence/breaching, beehive acoustics (queen loss/swarm), rain tank pump control, wildfire early cues.
- GNN boost: field/zone sensor graphs (soil moisture, canopy temp, wind) to optimise irrigation and predict hotspots.
11) Security & access (privacy-first)
- On-device liveness (blink/pose cues), tailgating detection, perimeter vibration/fence cut cues, vehicle + access policy checks, suspicious motion patterns without identity tracking.
- GNN boost: camera–door–sensor graphs to corroborate events and reduce false positives.
12) Edge cybersecurity (device & network)
- Device behaviour anomaly (syscalls, power draw signatures), lightweight traffic patterning (DNS/flow bursts), firmware tamper cues, USB/peripheral anomaly.
- GNN boost: communication graphs (device–device edges) to flag emerging botnets or lateral movement—processed in bursts on U85.
13) Field AI agents & HMI
- Voice-first technician helpers (wake → brief LLM response), multilingual translation snippets, checklists, AR prompters (vision cue + short instruction), offline kiosks.
- GNN boost: task graphs linking steps, tools, parts, and observations to navigate procedures.
14) Education, toys & prosumer
- Reading companions (hotword + small LLM), musical instrument tutors (audio events), STEM kits (sensor fusion challenges), smart baby monitors (sound+motion cues).
- GNN boost: progress/skill knowledge graphs for personalised lessons.
15) Aerospace/defense/public safety (high-level, compliant)
- Platform health monitoring, payload event filters, RF/EO/IR cue triage, SAR victim audio cues, perimeter breach cues in contested comms.
- GNN boost: asset–sensor graphs to fuse multi-sensor cues under bandwidth constraints.
How GNNs layer on top of TENNs (patterns)
- Spatio-temporal event graphs: Akida turns raw streams into event embeddings; you build a dynamic graph (nodes = sensors/objects, edges = proximity/causality). U85 runs message-passing to reason about spread, influence, and anomalies across space/time.
- Scene graphs from vision: TENNs (or a small CNN) emit object/keypoint nodes; GNN resolves relationships (tool near hand; person in no-go zone).
- Device–device graphs: For fleets, buildings, or networks, nodes are assets and edges are couplings (power, mechanical, traffic, comms). GNNs provide root-cause and next-best action.
- Knowledge graphs: Link events → procedures → risks; use GNNs to rank steps or recommend mitigations given the current event subgraph.
I also asked ChatGPT if there was anything off the shelf today by way of comparison that could perform the same number of applications that the Ensemble E8 (A32 + dual M55 + Ethos-U85) + BrainChip Akida/TENNs (+ GNNs) combo could and it said:
Answer
There is no off-the-shelf platform right now that can handle as broad a spectrum of applications as your hypothetical E8 + Akida/TENNs + GNNs combo:
- Dense tasks (transformers, SLMs, CNNs, GNN message-passing).
- Event-driven tasks (wake words, anomalies, gestures, temporal patterns).
- Always-on ultra-low-power monitoring + burst heavy compute.
- On-device learning + system-level graph reasoning.
Closest options (Hailo, Syntiant, Innatera, NXP/Infineon SoCs) each cover
pieces of this spectrum, but none unify them.
Conclusion:
Such an integration would be unique and disruptive. It plugs a gap between “always-on spiking chips” and “dense inference NPUs,” and by layering GNNs you move into fleet/plant/building intelligence at the edge — which nobody is commercially shipping yet.
Where the E8 + Akida/TENNs + GNNs combo is different
- Dual compute paradigms in one system
- Ethos-U85 = bursty, high-throughput dense math (CNNs, transformers, SLMs, GNN message-passing).
- Akida/TENNs = continuous, temporal, event-driven monitoring + on-device learning.
No other commercial SoC/board combines these two complementary approaches.
- Always-on + heavy inference in the same box
- Current market forces you to pick:
- Dense-only NPUs (Hailo, EdgeTPU, U85 SoCs).
- Or event-only neuromorphics (Syntiant, Innatera).
- This combo covers both μW-class always-on and TOPS-class bursts.
- On-device adaptation
- Akida’s few-shot/continual learning lets the system adapt to new triggers without cloud retraining.
- Dense NPUs don’t offer this today.
- System-level reasoning with GNNs
- U85 can run GNN layers on top of Akida-generated event embeddings (TENNs).
- This enables graph-based causal reasoning (asset graphs, zone graphs, fleet graphs).
- No mainstream off-the-shelf stack is marketed today for this edge GNN + neuromorphic hybrid.