eetimes.com, Aug. 07, 2024 –
Silicon Valley AI chip startup Femtosense has partnered with South Korean microcontroller maker ABOV Semiconductor to make a system-in-package featuring Femtosense's low-power AI accelerator chiplet, the sparsity processing unit (SPU), with ABOV's Arm Cortex-M0+ microcontroller chiplet. Both companies will market and sell the new AI MCU in audio applications, particularly consumer electronics and white goods that require low-cost, low-power voice control.
Femtosense partnered with ABOV in part due to the Korean firm's links to Samsung, Femtosense CEO Sam Fok told EE Times.
"If you have a Samsung home appliance, there's a good chance [ABOV's] MCUs are already in there, controlling motors in washing machines, displays on microwaves, or something else," he said. "It makes sense to pair their strength in that supply chain, in that vendor list, with the differentiated AI capabilities we bring."
An embedded chiplet-based solution–really just a system–in–package (SiP) or multi-chip module (MCM)–offers some of the same benefits that chiplets do for bigger designs, Fok said.