Imagination Technologies (LSE:IMG) reveals its complete,
standalone hardware IP neural network accelerator, with
industry-leading area efficiency delivered by a specialized PowerVR
architecture implementation for neural networks (NNs). Companies
building SoCs for mobile, surveillance, automotive and consumer
systems can integrate the new PowerVR Series2NX Neural Network
Accelerator (NNA) for high-performance computation of neural
networks at very low power consumption in minimal silicon area.
Neural networks such as Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs),
Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) and Long Short Term Memory
networks (LSTMs) are enabling an explosion in technological
progress across industries. NNAs are a fundamental class of
processors, likely to be as significant as CPUs and GPUs, both of
which Imagination already delivers. Potential applications for NNAs
are innumerable, but include: photography enhancement and
predictive text enhancement in mobile devices; feature detection
and eye tracking in AR/VR headsets; pedestrian detection and driver
alertness monitoring in automotive safety systems; facial
recognition and crowd behavior analysis in smart surveillance;
online fraud detection, content advice, and predictive UX; speech
recognition and response in virtual assistants; and collision
avoidance and subject tracking in drones.
According to the January 2017 Embedded Vision Developer Survey
conducted by the Embedded Vision Alliance, 79% of respondents said
they were already using or were planning to use neural networks to
perform computer vision functions in their products or services. As
technologies continue to advance at a rapid rate, a broader range
of companies will be able to develop products and services with
neural networks. Imagination customers are already developing and
deploying NN based systems into markets including security, mobile,
automotive and set-top box.
Jeff Bier, founder of the Embedded Vision Alliance, says:
“Numerous system and application developers are adopting deep
neural network algorithms to bring new perceptual capabilities to
their products. In many cases, a key challenge is providing
sufficient processing performance for these demanding algorithms
while meeting strict product cost and power consumption
constraints. Specialized processors like the PowerVR 2NX NNA,
designed specifically for neural network algorithms, will enable
deployment of these powerful algorithms in many new
applications.”
As neural networks become increasingly common, dedicated
hardware solutions like the 2NX NNA – which provides an 8x
performance density improvement versus DSP-only solutions – will be
required to achieve the highest possible performance with the
lowest possible power and cost. In addition, neural networks are
traditionally very bandwidth hungry, and the memory bandwidth
requirements grow with the increase in size of neural network
models. This introduces significant challenges for SoC designers
and OEMs in designing a system that can provide the required
bandwidth to the NNA. The PowerVR 2NX can minimize bandwidth
requirements for the external DDR memory to ensure a system is not
bandwidth limited in terms of performance. Widespread availability
of dedicated hardware like the PowerVR 2NX NNA will allow for
further development of applications based on these neural network
technologies.
PowerVR 2NX NNA enables the most efficient
solutions PowerVR 2NX is a completely new architecture
designed from the ground-up to provide:
- The industry’s highest inference/mW IP cores to deliver the
lowest power consumption*
- The industry’s highest inference/mm2 IP cores to enable the
most cost-effective solutions*
- The industry’s lowest bandwidth solution* – with support for
fully flexible bit depth for weights and data including low
bandwidth modes down to 4-bit
- Industry-leading performance of 2048 MACs/cycle in a single
core, with the ability to go to higher levels with multi core
Chris Longstaff, senior director of product and technology
marketing, PowerVR, at Imagination, says: “Dedicated hardware for
neural network acceleration will become a standard IP block on
future SoCs just as CPUs and GPUs have done. We are excited to
bring to market the first full hardware accelerator to completely
support a flexible approach to precision, enabling neural networks
to be executed in the lowest power and bandwidth, whilst offering
absolute performance and performance per mm2 that outstrips
competing solutions. The tools we provide will enable developers to
get their networks up and running very quickly for a fast path to
revenue.”
The 2NX includes hardware IP, software and tools to provide a
complete neural network solution for SoCs. It efficiently runs all
common neural network computational layers. Depending on the
computation requirements of the inference tasks, it can be used
standalone – with no additional hardware required – or in
combination with other processors such as CPUs and GPUs.
Neural networks everywhere The PowerVR 2NX NNA
is designed to power inference engines across a range of markets,
with a highly scalable architecture designed to power future
solutions across many others.
Mobile: With the upcoming release of Tensorflow
Lite and an API for Android, as well as momentum of the Caffe2Go
framework, we will see an explosion in the number of AI enabled
smartphone applications. Companies need a highly efficient way to
perform inference tasks for functions such as image recognition,
speech recognition, computational photography and more. PowerVR 2NX
is the only IP solution today that can deliver against all of the
requirements for a deployable mobile solution with its low power,
low area, MMU and planned support for Android. In mobile devices
where a GPU is mandated, companies can pair a new PowerVR Series9XE
or 9XM GPU with the 2NX NNA in the same silicon footprint as a
competing standalone GPU.
Smart surveillance: Massive growth in numbers
of cameras, both home and commercial installations, is driving the
need for vision processing including neural networks. Smart cameras
based on these technologies can be used for decision-making based
on security alerts, retail analytics, demographics and engagement
data. Taking into account bandwidth requirements, data
confidentiality and other issues, cameras must be designed for some
amount of ‘edge’ video analytics processing within the camera.
Since these cameras typically have either no GPU or a very small
GPU, and lower performance CPUs, what’s needed is an efficient,
high-performance standalone neural network accelerator. The 2NX NNA
is ideal, and is highly scalable to address both consumer and
commercial implementations.
Automotive: Applications for neural networks in
vehicles include driver alertness monitoring, driver gaze tracking,
seat occupancy, road sign detection, drivable path analysis, road
user detection, driver recognition and others. As the number of
autonomous vehicles and smart transportation systems increases over
the next several years, these applications will continue to expand.
Within automotive systems, a full hardware solution like the 2NX
NNA is required to meet the associated performance points.
Home entertainment: Devices such as set-top
boxes and televisions will increasingly provide solutions based on
neural networks, for example the ability to adapt preferences to
certain users, provide automated child locks, and automatically
pause and record programs based on user behavior. With such
features, companies can increase their differentiation and
revenues. Key to implementing neural networks on these devices will
be highly efficient bandwidth and low cost as well as support for
NN APIs – features at the heart of the 2NX NNA. There are numerous
other emerging entertainment applications for NNA, including
AR/VR.
Says Tony Chia, co-founder and VP, Nanjing Ruiyue Technology
Co., Ltd. (Nibiru), a provider of mobile VR and AR technology and
operating services: “Innovative technologies from partners like
Imagination are key to ensuring VR solutions deliver highly
immersive gaming and video experiences to consumers. We’re really
excited about the potential applications for neural networks in
VR/AR in terms of tracking, controlling, pose recognition, speech
recognition and adding more interactivity to the experience. A
chipset incorporating the PowerVR 2NX NNA can provide the
throughput and power efficiency needed to take the VR/AR experience
to the next level.”
Making it easy for developers Imagination is
providing everything needed for developers to get their networks up
and running quickly and easily, ensuring that compute and bandwidth
can be well balanced against accuracy. PowerVR 2NX development
resources include mapping and tuning tools, sample networks,
evaluation tools and documentation. The comprehensive PowerVR NX
Mapping Tool enables easy porting from industry standard machine
learning frameworks such as Caffe and Tensorflow. Advanced network
designers will be able to design and implement networks on the 2NX
NNA that exploit all of its hardware features.
Imagination is also making available the common Imagination DNN
(Deep Neural Network) API to enable easy transition between CPU,
GPU and NNA. The single API works across multiple SoC
configurations for easy prototyping on existing devices.
Availability The PowerVR 2NX NNA is available
for licensing now. Contact info@imgtec.com for more
information.
Editor’s Notes: * Based on market data
available in August 2017 from a variety of sources.
About Imagination Technologies Imagination is a
global technology leader whose products touch the lives of billions
of people across the globe. The company’s broad range of silicon IP
(intellectual property) includes the key processing blocks needed
to create the SoCs (Systems on Chips) that power all mobile,
consumer and embedded electronics. Its unique multimedia, processor
and connectivity technologies enable its customers to get to market
quickly with complete and highly differentiated SoC platforms.
Imagination’s licensees include many of the world’s leading
semiconductor manufacturers, network operators and OEMs/ODMs who
are creating some of the world’s most iconic products.
See: www.imgtec.com.
Follow Imagination on Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, RSS, Facebook
and Blog.
Imagination, PowerVR and the Imagination Technologies logo are
trademarks of Imagination Technologies Limited and/or its
affiliated group companies in the United Kingdom and/or other
countries. Khronos, Vulkan, OpenCL and OpenVX are trademarks of the
Khronos Group Inc. All other logos, products, trademarks and
registered trademarks are the property of their respective
owners.
Imagination Technologies’ Press Contacts: |
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UK: David Harold |
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david.harold@imgtec.com |
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+44 (0)1923 260
511 |
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USA: Jen
Bernier-Santarini |
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jen.bernier@imgtec.com |
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+1 408-530-5178 |
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