You probably know by now that I’m a big proponent of dev kits, eval kits, or whatever you call them. At Embedded World last week, QuickLogic was showing off its Merced HDK, which is essentially an evaluation platform for the company’s EOS S3AI SoC. The IC is aimed at artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) applications. The single-chip EOS S3AI works with QuickLogic’s SensiML Analytics Toolkit to efficiently identify which algorithms are best for the application, then generates the appropriate AI models.

The Merced HDK comes with time-series sensors, including accelerometer/gyroscope/magnetometer motion sensors and two digital microphones. Data can be stored locally using a μSD card or transmitted over BLE. The kit is designed to an Arduino form factor, making it something that developers are likely already familiar and comfortable with. A demo application is included that lets the user get started pretty quickly, and a bundled boot-from-flash feature lets users evaluate the company’s QuickAI applications.