EdgeCortix Expands Delivery of its Industry Leading SAKURA-I AI Co-processor Devices and MERA Software Suite

High performance, low latency, low power, edge focused AI platform, delivered to Early Access Program Members worldwide

Tokyo, Japan., April 20, 2023 -- EdgeCortix®Inc., the innovative Edge Artificial Intelligence (AI) Platform company, focused on delivering class-leading compute efficiency and ultra-low latency for AI inference; announced, it is shipping its industry leading, energy-efficient, turn-key, AI co-processor, branded as the EdgeCortix SAKURA-I, to its global Early Access Program members.

"We are very pleased to be announcing the fulfillment of our first-generation semiconductor solution, the EdgeCortix SAKURA-I AI co-processor. Designed and engineered in Japan, SAKURA-I features up to 40 trillion operations per second (TOPs) of dedicated AI performance at sub-10 watts of power consumption.", said Sakyasingha Dasgupta, CEO and Founder of EdgeCortix, "We are delivering a complete Edge AI platform to our Early Access Program members, comprising both software and hardware solutions, which includes our recently updated MERA software suite. Program members include numerous global industry leading enterprise customers across both the commercial and defense sectors. We developed the EdgeCortix Early Access Program (EAP) with a focus on offering customers the opportunity to assess EdgeCortix's products and services at scale, by deploying them within their own complex, heterogeneous environments. The goal of the EAP offering is three-fold: showcasing the ease of integration into customer's existing heterogeneous systems, enabling customers to prove-out the effectiveness and efficiency of EdgeCortix solutions versus competing products and facilitating a direct dialog with EdgeCortix product management, enabling tailor-made fit in certain cases."

An open-source version of EdgeCortix's MERA software, including a heterogeneous platform compiler and tool set has been available publicly for several months on Github and EAP members have previously been able to leverage production versions of EdgeCortix's software framework as well as its Dynamic Neural Accelerator (DNA), EdgeCortix's patented neural processing engine IP. This marks the start of the inclusion of the SAKURA-I AI co-processor into the EAP. As a key component of EdgeCortix's Edge AI platform, SAKURA-I is designed for fast and power-efficient inference with one or multiple deep learning models at a time. SAKURA-I is optimized for applications requiring fast AI inference on streaming data, such as high-resolution video feeds, real-time controls for autonomous systems, radio-frequency signal processing or 5G-Advanced and AI integrated applications. SAKURA-I is implemented in TSMC 12nm FinFET, providing industry leading inference performance into a small footprint in low power environments, with most models running on SAKURA-I consuming only an average of 2W-5W of power.

"EdgeCortix's technology addresses the most difficult challenges in edge-AI, delivering high throughput along with low latency and low power consumption, as well as providing the flexibility for customers to employ it in nearly any system architecture."

Mike Demler, Semiconductor Industry Analyst

The SAKURA-I AI Co-processor is an artificial intelligence focused accelerator device, designed for rapid computations and power-efficient inference processing, from small to medium form-factor systems. SAKURA-I is especially suited for real-time applications with streaming data, such as high-resolution camera and lidar data, real time controls for autonomous systems, radiofrequency (RF) signal processing or 5G-AI integrated systems. Designed in EdgeCortix's Japan R&D center, the SAKURA-I co-processor delivers industry leading AI inference capabilities across power and mobility sensitive edge devices like aerial, underwater or ground-based manned/autonomous platforms, smart city, smart manufacturing, visual and perception and 5G systems.

EdgeCortix SAKURA-I is benchmarked vs. leading edge focused GPU platform under different power modes. Edge GPU is expected to be a TSMC 7nm device, while SAKURA-I is TSMC 12nm device. End to end latency is measured under batch size 1, in all cases. All models deployed at INT8 without any pruning. All measurements on Edge GPU were compiled and optimized by the vendor's latest tools. All SAKURA-I measurements were compiled and deployed on hardware using EdgeCortix MERA v1.3 software.

SAKURA-I Edge AI Processor Overview:

• Up to 40 TOPS (single chip). Multiple chips can be combined on a single board.
• Powered by EdgeCortix patented run-time reconfigurable data path - Dynamic Neural Accelerator IP.
• On-chip dual 64-bit LPDDR4x – up to 16 GB on single board.
• PCIe Gen 3 up to 16 GB/s bandwidth.
• PCIe Device TDP at 10W-15W based on board form factor.
• Dynamic power while running models on chip ~1W-5W.

For more information on the SAKURA-I AI co-processor click here.

For more information on the EdgeCortix Edge AI Platform click here.

For more information on the EdgeCortix Early Access Program click here.

About EdgeCortix Inc.

EdgeCortix is an is an Edge Artificial Intelligence (AI) Platform company, pioneering the future of the connected intelligent edge. It was founded in 2019 with the radical idea of taking a software first approach, while designing an artificial intelligence specific runtime reconfigurable processor from the ground up using a technique called "hardware & software co-exploration". Targeting advanced computer vision applications first, using proprietary hardware and software IP on existing processors like FPGAs and custom designed SAKURA ASIC, the company is geared towards positively disrupting the rapidly growing AI hardware space across defense, telecommunications / 5G, aerospace, smart cities, industry 4.0, autonomous vehicles and robotics.