Author: Dean Takahashi / Source: VentureBeat
Artificial intelligence processing might best be done at the edge of the network, or where sensors collect data. GreenWaves Technologies is today unveiling an open source-based processor that can do just that, with the hope of enabling a new wave of products — from smart toys to smart cities.
Grenoble, France-based GreenWaves is announcing its Gap8 internet of things (IoT) application processor today to handle low-power AI processing in sensor devices. The chip is based on the RISC-V open source processor architecture, and it is meant to solve problems that a lot of other processors were not designed to handle.
Martin Croome, VP of development at GreenWaves, said in an interview with VentureBeat that AI products such as self-driving cars or crime-detection cameras in cities will collect an enormous amount of data in the future. Normally, it might make sense to gather the data and send it to a computer in a datacenter. But these IoT devices will collect so much data they could bog down the network. So it makes sense to process the data where the sensors are actually located.
“RISC-V gives you the ability to do an open source processor, but it doesn’t give you the implementation,” Croome said. “We do that.”
GreenWaves is a rival to ARM, which has a proprietary RISC architecture that is widely licensed to various chip design companies in the industry. ARM sells intellectual property that can be integrated into a chip, which can be made by a variety of chip manufacturers.
GreenWaves will offer more flexibility, Croome said.“It’s not an accelerator for the datacenter or a smartphone processor,” Croome said. “It’s a flexible, very low-power processor where the battery might last a few years.”
The Gap8 IoT processor is an edge processor that can capture, analyze, classify, and act on the fusion of rich data sources, such as images, sounds, or vibrations. The processor is optimized to execute image and audio algorithms,…
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