Neural network core is optimised for robotaxis

Imagination Technologies has launched a scalable neural network accelerator IP core optimised for automotive and autonomous systems but also aimed at industrial designs. The Series4 Neural Network Accelerator (NNA) core has been optimised for the YOLOv3 neural network framework, for processing large, rectangular images, rather than a general purpose execution unit. It is aimed at developer of system-on-chip devices for sensor fusion in high performance autonomous vehicles such as robotaxis, last mile delivery and automated street sweepers. The NNA core achieves 12.5TOPS of performance through 4096 multiply accumulate (MAC) units in 1mm2 on a 5nm process technology, all connected by a 256 network on chip (NOC). This that is over 20x faster than an embedded GPU and 1000x faster than an embedded CPU for AI inference says the company.