Knowing Is Half the Battle

Miniaturization has revolutionized computing ever since the advent of the first digital computer. The machines that once filled entire rooms and required teams of engineers to operate are now vastly dwarfed in capability by the smartphones that we carry in our pockets. Now that trend towards miniaturization is transforming the field of machine learning as well. Image and voice recognition, object detection, predictive maintenance, and many other applications that once required complex algorithms that run on huge computing resources in the cloud can now run on a tiny microcontroller in a low-power IoT device. In part, these feats have been achieved with the help of advances in computing power that were previously mentioned, but that alone is not enough.