AImotive’s AI-optimized hardware IP is available to global chip manufacturers for license. aiWare, built from the ground up for running neural networks, is up to 20 times more power efficient than other leading AI acceleration hardware solutions on the market. VeriSilicon Holdings Co., Ltd., a Silicon Platform as a Service (SiPaaS) company, will be the first to integrate aiWare into a chip design,and the aiWare-based test chips will be fabricated on the GLOBALFOUNDRIES (GF) 22FDX® semiconductor process (www.globalfoundries.com).
AImotive develops a full stack technology solution and the most powerful Artificial Intelligence software for the automotive industry, designed to provide self-driving vehicles better safety, improved comfort and increased productivity. AImotive built aiWare to address the growing need for hardware accelerators optimized specifically for neural networks. aiWare is a power efficient, high-performance neural network hardware IP for automotive embedded solutions, helping chip companies build the optimal hardware to support the performance needs of an AI-driven autonomous driving software. The teams at AImotive and VeriSilicon have a long-standing partnership; aiWare will serve as the core of the demonstration chips designed by VeriSilicon, as the company brings its own silicon expertise to the final product.
The test chips will be manufactured using GF’s 22FDX process technology, which employs a 22nm FD-SOI transistor architecture to deliver the industry’s best combination of performance, power, and area for a new era of connected intelligent systems.
AImotive has been a vocal and ongoing proponent of open collaboration in order to bring autonomous driving to market faster. The company was the first to develop a neural network data exchange standard called NNEF (Neural Network Exchange Format) with the support of the Khronos Group, a global consortium dedicated to standardizing hardware access interfaces. The NNEF standard creates a more accessible and universal AI development ecosystem by making communication simpler and more reliable between AI toolsets and inference engines. The aiWare-based test chip represents the first to meet the new NNEF standard.
AImotive, VeriSilicon and GF plan to debut the new aiWare-based chip in early 2018. In the meantime, AImotive will offer an FPGA evaluation kit for global semiconductor companies that further demonstrates the value of aiWare.