LeapMind (Tokyo, Japan) announced its entry into the processor IP business with Efficiera, an ultra-low-power AI inference accelerator IP product. Efficiera is optimized for models that have been heavily quantized using LeapMind's'extremely low-bit quantization' software techniques. It is designed for convolutional neural networks (CNNs), the type of network typically used for image processing and analysis tasks today. "This is the company's first hardware IP product. But we are working on the development of a core technology called extreme quantization technology that operates at both software and hardware-IP levels with a network optimized for practical applications and a dedicated compiler," a LeapMind spokesperson told EE Times.