GreenWaves? Ultra-Low Power GAP9 IoT Apps Processor Suits Intelligence at the Edge

By Rich Nass

Executive Vice President

Embedded Computing Design

January 21, 2020

News

GreenWaves? Ultra-Low Power GAP9 IoT Apps Processor Suits Intelligence at the Edge

GAP9 lets OEMs embed machine learning and signal processing capabilities into battery-powered or energy-harvesting devices.

GreenWaves Technologies, a fabless semiconductor vendor focused on ultra-low power edge-based AI processing, recently announced a new member of its GAP IoT application processor family, the GAP9. This latest member combines architectural enhancements using Global Foundries 22-nm FDX process to deliver a peak cluster memory bandwidth of 41.6 Gbytes/s and up to 50 GOPS combined compute power at an overall power consumption of 50 mW.

GAP9 lets OEMs embed machine learning and signal processing capabilities into battery-powered or energy-harvesting devices. This could include IoT sensors in smart buildings or medical wearable devices.

Building on the company’s GAP8 architecture, GAP9 adds support for floating-point arithmetic across all cores based on a transprecision floating-point unit capable of handling floating-point numbers in 8-, 16-, and 32-bit precision with support for vectorization. GAP9 also extends support for fixed-point arithmetic using vectorized 4-bit and 2-bit operations. This positions GAP9 for applications that can take advantage of deep levels of quantization.

GAP9 incorporates bi-directional multichannel, synchronized digital audio interfaces, suiting it for wearable audio products. It also incorporates both CSI-2 and parallel camera interfaces. Other enhancements include the GAP AutoTiler, allowing automatic code generation for neural network graphs and GAPFlow, a series of tools for automating the conversion of neural networks from training packages such as Google TensorFlow.

Richard Nass’ key responsibilities include setting the direction for all aspects of OSM’s ECD portfolio, including digital, print, and live events. Previously, Nass was the Brand Director for Design News. Prior, he led the content team for UBM’s Medical Devices Group, and all custom properties and events. Nass has been in the engineering OEM industry for more than 30 years. In prior stints, he led the Content Team at EE Times, Embedded.com, and TechOnLine. Nass holds a BSEE degree from NJIT.

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