Gyrfalcon has announced a new AI accelerator for consumer devices, the Lightspeeur 5801. This device is the company's fourth production chip, and it has already been designed into LG's Q70, a mid-range smartphone, where it handles inference for camera effects such as Bokeh. According to Gyrfalcon, the Lightspeeur 5801 offers 2.8 TOPS at 224mW (equivalent to 12.6 TOPS/W) with 4ms latency. Clock speed is variable between 50- and 200MHz to allow the tradeoff of performance and power consumption. The chip can handle 448 by 448 pixel images, four times larger than its previous edge inference chip, the Lightspeeur 2801.

Startup Gyrfalcon is moving fast with a chip for inferencing on deep neural networks, but it faces an increasingly crowded market in AI silicon. A year after it got its first funding, the company is showing a working chip and claiming design wins in smartphones, security cameras and industrial automation equipment. Data centers typically train deep neural networks and run inference tasks on them using banks of servers. Increasingly, client and embedded systems from cars to handsets are adopting accelerators to speed the inferencing jobs. Apple, Google and Huawei are already shipping smartphones with inferencing blocks in their custom SoCs.

Yokohama, December 20, 2017 – Socionext Inc., a leader in advanced SoC solution for video and imaging systems, has signed a strategic partnership agreement for the development of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) platform with Silicon Valley, California-based Gyrfalcon Technology Inc. The combination of Gyrfalcon's proprietary AI accelerator chip and Socionext's high-efficiency parallel processor system will create a high-speed, high-density, low-power system to perform image and video analysis, recognition and segmentation in surveillance systems, live-streaming and other video applications. Socionext expects to start sales of the jointly-developed solution with AI capabilities in mid-March, 2018. Turkish electronics maker Bilkon Ltd, which provides surveillance systems for a public agency in Turkey, will be one of Socionext's first customers to apply the AI solution. Requirements for a similar solution are growing, and Socionext and Gyrfalcon will work together to expand the business in the global market.