Quadric and MegaChips Form Partnership to Bring IP Products to ASIC and SoC Market
May 23, 2022
News
Quadric and MegaChips announced a strategic partnership to deliver ASIC and SoC solutions built on Quadric’s edge AI processor architecture.
MegaChips announced an equity stake in Quadric in January 2022 and is also a major investor in a $21M Series B funding round announced in March through their MegaChips LSI USA Corporation subsidiary. The round aims to help Quadric release the next version of its processor architecture, improve the performance and breadth of the Quadric software development kit (SDK), and roll out IP products to be integrated in MegaChips’ ASICs and SoCs.
Quadric offers the unique ability to handle both neural backbones and classical dynamic data-parallel algorithms in a unified architecture, bringing advanced on-device AI capabilities to edge-based applications. The Quadric architecture is the industry's first general-purpose neural processing unit (GPNPU). Quadric's architecture delivers high machine learning (ML) inference performance, but unlike other neural network accelerators that support a limited number of ML graph operators, the Quadric solution also has general-purpose control and signal processing capabilities, blending the best attributes of NPU accelerators with DSPs. Quadric GPNPUs can run both neural net graphs and C++ code for signal pre-processing and post-processing
While many other edge processing solutions combine high-power CPU clusters or exotic DSPs with application-specific network processing units (NPUs), Quadric’s GPNPU architecture provides the flexibility to accelerate the entire application pipeline without the need for a companion processor paired with the NPU.
MegaChips’ and Quadric’s collaboration addresses a growing industry trend in which cloud-based AI, ML, and inference are migrating to the network edge. This migration requires on-device AI processing capabilities to handle the massive amounts of data generated by billions of IoT devices and edge-based applications. Target applications for MegaChips’ ASICs and SoCs based on Quadric’s IP include autonomous driving (ADAS/LiDAR), industrial robotics, factory automation, automated guided vehicles (AGV), and advanced medical equipment.
For more information, visit: https://megachips.com/artificial-intelligence-machine-learning and quadric.io
