POLYN Technology, a fabless semiconductor company providing Neuromorphic Analog Signal Processing (NASP) Tiny AI chips, and Edge Impulse, the leading embedded machine learning (ML) development platform, have partnered to address ultra-low-power on-sensor solutions for wearables, hearables, and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT).
The collaboration aims to leverage the NASP platform to enable more customers to develop application-specific chips for one-dimensional signal processing at the sensor level. This will help expedite the adoption of ML at the edge.
"Resource-hungry edge devices present more and more complexity in sound processing and this is an important challenge to address," said Aleksandr Timofeev, founder and CEO of POLYN. "Additional challenges include power, accuracy, and novel capabilities. The Edge Impulse-POLYN collaboration will help vendors resolve these issues in next-generation products."
POLYN’s NASP development framework provides fast and easy conversion of trained neural networks from any well-known ML library into neuromorphic analog chips. Neural-Net-To-Chip automation tools provide a fully functional simulation of the resulting math model, converting it into chip production files. These unique tools dramatically reduce product time to market, CAPEX, and redesign OPEX.
The unique POLYN business model provides customer support throughout the entire product development cycle, including neural network selection, training, optimization, and testing on the software simulation. As a result, the size and structure of the neural network is always optimized to the customer’s task, ensuring effective solutions and further investment savings. POLYN’s approach supports fast and cost-effective development of tailored solutions that perform deep learning computations on mass-market devices.
Edge Impulse’s machine learning software enables enterprises to build smarter edge products, providing powerful automation and low-code capabilities to make it easier to create valuable datasets and develop advanced ML algorithms. Their technology empowers developers to bring more ML products to market faster, and helps teams rapidly develop industry-specific solutions in weeks instead of years.
"We’re very excited to work with POLYN to help nurture brand-new solutions using our respective technologies," said Zach Shelby, CEO and co-founder of Edge Impulse. "The combination of their IP and our platform provides opportunities for users to overcome development challenges while finding valuable new applications for their data."
POLYN and Edge Impulse are focusing initially on hearables using POLYN’s unique combination of voice detection and voice extraction from any ambient environment with the up to 150uW power consumption, enabling entirely novel designs for hearing aids, hearing assistance products, earbuds, and other miniature devices. Additional capabilities, including music detection and processing, are available for that range of products.