category: Embedded ML Design

category: IoT, Security & Automotive

Hybrid Architecture Blends Best Of Both Worlds
By Steve Roddy - 11 Apr, 2024 - Comments: 0

Quadric chose the brand name Chimera to describe the company’s novel general purpose neural processing unit (GPNPU) architecture. According to the online Oxford dictionary, in biology a chimera is “an organism containing a mixture of genetically different tissues (or DNA).” Quadric made that naming choice to reflect the fact that its Chimera GPNPU has characteristics of both conventiona... » read more

Embrace The New!
By Steve Roddy - 14 Mar, 2024 - Comments: 0

The ResNet family of machine learning algorithms was introduced to the AI world in 2015. A slew of variations was rapidly discovered that at the time pushed the accuracy of ResNets close to the 80% threshold (78.57% Top 1 accuracy for ResNet-152 on ImageNet). This state-of-the-art performance at the time, coupled with the rather simple operator structure that was readily amenable to hardware ac... » read more

Thanks For The Memories!
By Steve Roddy - 15 Feb, 2024 - Comments: 0

“I want to maximize the MAC count in my AI/ML accelerator block because the TOPs rating is what sells, but I need to cut back on memory to save cost,” said no successful chip designer, ever. Emphasis on “successful” in the above quote. It’s not a purely hypothetical quotation. We’ve heard it many times. Chip architects — or their marketing teams — try to squeeze as much brag-... » read more

Is Transformer Fever Fading?
By Steve Roddy - 11 Jan, 2024 - Comments: 0

The hottest, buzziest thing bursts onto the scene and captures the attention of the business press and even the general public. Scads of articles and videos are published about The Hot Thing. And then, in the blink of an eye, the world’s attention shifts to the Next New Thing! Are we talking about the latest pop song that leads the Spotify streaming charts? Perhaps a new fashion trend that... » read more

BYO NPU Benchmarks
By Steve Roddy - 14 Dec, 2023 - Comments: 0

In our last blog post, we highlighted the ways that NPU vendors can shade the truth about performance on benchmark networks such that comparing common performance scores such as “Resnet50 Inferences / Second” can be a futile exercise. But there is a straight-forward, low-investment method for an IP evaluator to short-circuit all the vendor shenanigans and get a solid apples-to-apples result... » read more

Does Your NPU Vendor Cheat On Benchmarks?
By Steve Roddy - 12 Oct, 2023 - Comments: 0

It is common industry practice for companies seeking to purchase semiconductor IP to begin the search by sending prospective vendors a list of questions, typically called an RFI (Request for Information) or simply a Vendor Spreadsheet. These spreadsheets contain a wide gamut of requested information ranging from background on the vendor’s financial status, leadership team, IP design practices... » read more

Your AI Chip Doesn’t Need An Expensive Insurance Policy
By Steve Roddy - 14 Sep, 2023 - Comments: 0

Imagine you are an architect designing a new SoC for an application that needs substantial machine learning inferencing horsepower. The team in marketing has given you a list of ML workloads and performance specs that you need to hit. The in-house designed NPU accelerator works well for these known workloads – things like MobileNet v2 and Resnet50. The accelerator speeds up 95+% of the comput... » read more

Compiler-Driven Performance Boosts For GPNPUs
By Steve Roddy - 10 Aug, 2023 - Comments: 0

The GNU C Compiler – GCC – was first released in 1987. 36 years ago. Several version streams are still actively being developed and enhanced, with GCC13 being the most advanced, and a GCC v10.5 released in early July this year. You might think that with 36 years of refinement by thousands of contributors that penultimate performance has been achieved. All that could be discovered has bee... » read more

A Bridge From Mars To Venus
By Steve Roddy - 20 Jul, 2023 - Comments: 0

In a now-famous 1992 pop psychology book titled "Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus," author John Gray posited that most relationship troubles in couples stem from fundamental differences in socialization patterns between men and women. The analogy that the two partners came from different planets was used to describe how two people could perceive issues in completely different and sometim... » read more

(Vision) Transformers: Rise Of The Chimera
By Jon Bunting - 20 Jun, 2023 - Comments: 0

It’s 2023 and transformers are having a moment. No, I’m not talking about the latest installment of the Transformers movie franchise, "Transformers: Rise of the Beasts"; I’m talking about the deep learning model architecture class, transformers, that is fueling anticipation, excitement, fear, and investment in AI. Transformers are not so new in the world of AI anymore; they were first ... » read more

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