Microchip acquires Neuronix AI Labs
Microchip Technology has acquired Neuronix AI Labs to expand its capabilities for power-efficient, AI-enabled edge solutions deployed on field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs).
Neuronix AI Labs provides neural network sparsity optimisation technology which enables a reduction in power, size and calculations for tasks such as image classification, object detection and semantic segmentation, while still maintaining high accuracy.
The acquisition of this technology will enable Microchip to develop cost-effective, large-scale edge deployments of components designed for use in computer-vision applications on systems that have cost, size and power constraints and enable a multifold increase in AI/ML processing horsepower on low and mid-range FPGAs.
“The acquisition of Neuronix AI Labs’ technology will enhance our power efficiency for FPGAs and SoCs deployed in intelligent edge systems that utilize AI/ML algorithms,” says Bruce Weyer, corporate vice president of Microchip’s FPGA business unit, in a press release. “Neuronix technology combined with our VectorBlox design flow produces an increase in neural network performance efficiency and delivers outstanding GOPS/watt performance in our low-power PolarFire FPGAs and SoCs. Systems designers will now be able to architect and deploy small-footprint hardware that was previously difficult to build due to size, thermal or power constraints.”
Neuronix AI Labs' CEO Yaron Raz says that joining the Microchip team offers Neuronix an opportunity to scale and align with an FPGA portfolio that has set industry standards for power efficiency.
“Neuronix AI Labs has been laser-focused on producing best-in-class neural network acceleration architectures and algorithms that can transform user expectations of size, power, performance and cost,” says Yaron Raz.
