Startup Claims Performance Leadership With New AI Edge Chip

Hailo, an AI startup based in Israel, has released its initial chip that the company claims is "the world's top performing deep learning processor," with the Hailo-8 chip claimed to deliver 26 tera-operations pers second (TOPS), while consuming only a few watts of power. If true, that would certainly put it near or at the top of its class in performance for edge applications in areas like self-driving cars, drones, smart appliances, and virtual/augmented reality devices. The challenge in these edgey environments has always been to get AI processors with the requisite performance for these applications but consuming only the small amounts of power available in these settings. In fact, Hailo is positioning its new offering as chip that "enables edge devices to run sophisticated deep learning applications that could previously run only on the cloud." However, doesn't mean Hailo-8 is as powerful as a top-of-the-line inference GPU for the datacenter.