BrainChip Tapes Out AKD1500 Chip in GlobalFoundries 22nm FD SOI Process

Laguna Hills, Calif. – January 30, 2023 – BrainChip Holdings Ltd (ASX: BRN, OTCQX: BRCHF, ADR: BCHPY), the world’s first commercial producer of ultra-low power, fully digital, event-based, neuromorphic AI IP, today announced that it has achieved tape out of its AKD1500 reference design on GlobalFoundries’ 22nm fully depleted silicon-on-insulator (FD-SOI) technology. This milestone is part of validating BrainChip’s IP across different processes and foundries, empowering partners with varied global manufacturing options.

The AKD1500 uses the latest features of BrainChip’s extremely energy-efficient, event-based, Akida™ AI IP in combination with the GlobalFoundries’ ultra-low leakage, proprietary FDX™ process technology platform, to deliver an ideal solution for always-on, at-sensor applications or other low-power embedded applications in AIoT, industrial, consumer and automotive markets.

In always-on, at-sensor use cases, Akida can completely offload feed-forward networks without the use of a CPU, which enables extremely energy efficient intelligent sensors. For other low-power embedded applications, the CPU solely performs sensor fusion processes or runs the application with Akida managing all the AI acceleration to significantly minimize CPU workload and system load, freeing up the MCU for other general-purpose computation.

The AKD1500 is designed as an accelerator reference chip, using quad/octal SPI interfaces for MCU modules and PCIe for extensible cards, which assists partners in developing and demonstrating their solutions as a stepping stone to integrating the Akida IP into their production SoCs.

“This is an important validation milestone in the continuing innovation of our event-based, neuromorphic Akida IP, even if it is fully digital and portable across foundries,” said Anil Mankar, Co-Founder & Chief Development Officer at BrainChip. “The AKD1500 reference chip using GlobalFoundries’ very low-leakage FD SOI platform, showcases the possibilities for intelligent sensors in edge AI.”

About BrainChip Holdings Ltd (ASX: BRN, OTCQX: BRCHF, ADR: BCHPY)

BrainChip is the worldwide leader in edge AI on-chip processing and learning. The company’s first-to-market, fully digital, event-based AI processor, Akida^TM, uses neuromorphic principles to mimic the human brain, analyzing only essential sensor inputs at the point of acquisition, processing data with unparalleled efficiency, precision, and economy of energy. Akida uniquely enables edge learning local to the chip, independent of the cloud, dramatically reducing latency while improving privacy and data security. Akida Neural processor IP, which can be integrated into SoCs on any process technology, has shown substantial benefits on today’s workloads and networks, and offers a platform for developers to create, tune and run their models using standard AI workflows like Tensorflow/Keras. In enabling effective edge compute to be universally deployable across real world applications such as connected cars, consumer electronics, and industrial IoT, BrainChip is proving that on-chip AI, close to the sensor, is the future, for its customers’ products, as well as the planet. Explore the benefits of Essential AI at www.brainchip.com.