Kneron, Inc., a leading on-device edge artificial intelligence (AI) company based in San Diego, California, announces it has raised an additional $40M dollars in funding. Horizons Ventures, Hong Kong businessman Li Ka-Shing’s venture capital firm, is the lead investor of this round and has invested in previous rounds. Kneron previously raised $33 million in funding from Horizons Ventures, Alibaba Entrepreneurs Fund, CDIB, Himax Technologies, Inc, Qualcomm, Thundersoft, and Sequoia Capital.
AI
SEMICON Korea 2020 Keynotes to Highlight Future of AI
Semiconductor industry innovators SK hynix, Intel, imec and Graphcore will kick off SEMICON Korea 2020 with keynotes focusing on the future of artificial intelligence (AI) as an estimated 500 companies and 55,000 visitors gather February 5-7 at the COEX in Seoul for the latest microelectronics developments, innovations and trends powering the next wave of industry growth. Themed Design the Smarter Future, SEMICON Korea 2020 will feature more than 30 technology programs offering leading insights into semiconductor manufacturing, AI, MEMS and sensors, mobility, and metrology and inspection.
Murata and Google Team to Develop World’s Smallest AI Module With Coral Intelligence
Murata Electronics Americas announced today that it has created the world’s smallest artificial intelligence (AI) module in partnership with Google – the Coral Accelerator Module. The custom designed module packages Google’s Edge TPU ASIC within a miniaturized footprint. The solution overcomes some of the most pressing challenges in implementing AI solutions by delivering superior noise suppression and simplifying printed circuit board design in a smaller footprint. Miniaturization is key as all board space must be optimized to achieve highly robust functionality in space constrained operations. The result of this collaboration is a solution that speeds up the algorithmic calculations required to execute AI.
NXP Debuts i.MX Applications Processor with Dedicated Neural Processing Unit for Advanced Machine Learning at the Edge
NXP Semiconductors N.V. (NASDAQ: NXPI) today expanded its industry-leading EdgeVerse portfolio with the i.MX 8M Plus application processor – the first i.MX family to integrate a dedicated Neural Processing Unit (NPU) for advanced machine learning inference at the industrial and IoT (Internet-of-Things) edge. The i.MX 8M Plus combines a high-performance NPU delivering 2.3 TOPS (Tera Operations Per Second) with a Quad-core Arm® Cortex-A53 sub-system running at up to 2GHz, an independent real-time sub-system with an 800MHz Cortex-M7, a high-performance 800 MHz audio DSP for voice and natural language processing, dual camera Image Signal Processors (ISP), and a 3D GPU for rich graphics rendering.
Renesas Electronics’ High-Efficiency Power Management IC Adopted in Google Coral AI Products
Renesas Electronics Corporation (TSE:6723), a premier supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions, today announced its ISL91301B Power Management IC (PMIC) is designed into the latest Google Coral products. They include the Mini PCIe Accelerator, M.2 Accelerator A+E Key, M.2 Accelerator B+M Key, and System-on-Module (SoM). Google Coral integrates seamlessly into processes at any scale, helping designers create a variety of local artificial intelligence (AI) solutions for several industries.
CES 2020 Opens with Innovation That Will Change the World
CES® 2020 opens today unveiling the next generation of innovation that will redefine industries, create jobs and solve many of society’s challenges. With more than 4,400 exhibiting companies, including 1,200 startups, CES 2020 features the latest transformative technologies, including 5G, artificial intelligence, vehicle technology, digital health and more. Owned and produced by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA)®, CES 2020 runs through Friday, January 10, in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Baidu and Samsung Electronics Ready for Production of Leading-Edge AI Chip for Early Next Year
Baidu, Inc. (NASDAQ: BIDU), a leading Chinese-language internet search provider, and Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., a world leader in advanced semiconductor technology, today announced that Baidu’s first cloud-to-edge AI accelerator, Baidu KUNLUN, has completed its development and will be mass-produced early next year. Baidu KUNLUN chip is built on the company’s advanced XPU, a home-grown neural processor architecture for cloud, edge, and AI, as well as Samsung’s 14-nanometer (nm) process technology with its I-Cube (Interposer-Cube) package solution.
Blaize Presents Breakthrough AI Processing Architecture at CES 2020
Blaize™ today announced plans for the first public demonstrations of its Blaize Graph Streaming Processor™ (GSP™) architecture at CES 2020. A next-generation computing architecture designed for AI workloads, the Blaize offering tackles the economic and technical barriers to widespread AI adoption, addressing energy, cost and complexity challenges.
Intel Acquires Artificial Intelligence Chipmaker Habana Labs
Intel Corporation today announced that it has acquired Habana Labs, an Israel-based developer of programmable deep learning accelerators for the data center for approximately $2 billion. The combination strengthens Intel’s artificial intelligence (AI) portfolio and accelerates its efforts in the nascent, fast-growing AI silicon market, which Intel expects to be greater than $25 billion by 2024. Intel’s AI strategy is grounded in the belief that harnessing the power of AI to improve business outcomes requires a broad mix of technology – hardware and software – and full ecosystem support. Today, Intel AI solutions are helping customers turn data into business value and driving meaningful revenue for the company.
MIRISE Technologies to be Launched to Develop Semiconductors in Effort to Achieve Safe and Comfortable Future Global Mobility Society
DENSO Corporation and Toyota Motor Corporation today announced that they have named the joint venture to be established in April 2020 MIRISE Technologies (“MIRISE”). The joint venture will conduct research and advanced development of next-generation in-vehicle semiconductors. MIRISE is an acronym for Mobility Innovative Research Institute for SEmiconductors. It also conveys “mirai” (a Japanese word for “future”) and “rise.” Yoshifumi Kato has been appointed President and Representative Director of the new company.
