Sundance Multiprocessor Technology has joined Digital Catapult's Machine Intelligence Garage business incubator, in a move that will help to deepen its expertise in the deployment of AI (artificial intelligence) and ML (machine learning) techniques across a diverse range of embedded systems applications. In addition to Sundance's embedded platforms optimised for running deep learning algorithms used for performing autonomous navigation and other computer vision applications, these companies are working on a range of applications that include video analytics for improved livestock welfare management, solutions for reducing greenhouse emissions, interactive podcasting and neural networking. Digital Catapult is the UK's advanced digital technology innovation centre and connects start-up and scaleup companies with large businesses, investors, government and public organisations, and research and academia. Its Machine Intelligence Garage aims to provide support in the AI/ML arena as well as provide access to the compute-intensive power needed by these enterprises to develop and test their models. It is delivered as part of London's CAP-AI project and is part funded through the European Regional Development Fund. "We started the Machine Intelligence Garage to address the challenges the UK's promising early stage AI and ML companies face, accelerating their growth and helping them realise their true potential by providing access to high-level computational power, relevant expertise, mentoring and networking opportunities," said Jeremy Silver, CEO of Digital Catapult.

I was at a meetup when Simon Knowles, CTO of Graphcore, was giving his talk on the latest development at Graphcore, and that is also where I met with Peter Bloomfield from Digital Catapult (@digicatapult). Peter was spreading the word about Machine Intelligence Garage which is an amazing opportunity created by a collaboration between the government and industry leaders like Google, Nvidia, AWS, etc. to help startups and small businesses access compute resources, which they would have otherwise never been able to get hold of. Sometime later, we decided to have a chat discussing the usual questions like what is Machine Intelligence Garage, what is the history, why, how, who, when, and at what stage is the program at and how do people get involved? As you would imagine, I found our conversation interesting and informative and hence decided to write about it and share it with the rest of us. Mani: Hey, Peter, great meeting you and learning about the initiative from Digital Catapult, can you please share with me the history about this initiative?

From the Alan Turing Institute to DeepMind, the UK boasts a rich history and exciting present in machine learning and artificial intelligence research and development, led by academia and industry. According to recent research, AI is the largest commercial opportunity for Britain, projected to add £232 billion to the UK economy by 2030. SMEs and start-ups will play a significant role in grasping this. The segment highlighted by Theresa May during her speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, where she told world leaders that the UK's strong start-up scene will be instrumental in making the UK a world leader in ethical AI. However, start-ups today still need to overcome some significant challenges before reaching their full potential.

Today Cray announced that it has partnered with Digital Catapult and its Machine Intelligence Garage in the UK to help organizations of all sizes speed the development of machine intelligence systems. This partnership enables the Machine Intelligence Garage to offer companies the supercomputing power and expertise required to develop and build machine learning and AI solutions. Our partnership with Cray opens a new door for UK machine intelligence businesses," said Anat Elhalal, Head of Technology and AI/ML Lead Tech at Digital Catapult. "Cray's expertise in high-performance computing will give startups much-needed resources to continue the amazing work already underway in the UK for AI and machine learning solutions." The Machine Intelligence Garage is a program delivered by Digital Catapult, which supports and promotes advanced digital technology and transformation to drive growth in the UK economy. The effort takes its name from the mythical place garages have in the history of technology. The Machine Intelligence Garage holds an open call every six to 12 weeks to select startups that can benefit most from the computational resources the Machine Intelligence Garage can offer from within the organization or through its partners. It then selects about 30 startups and develops for each a tailored program offering supervision, feedback and a case study of each startup's corresponding results. Based on research conducted by the Machine Intelligence Garage, startups in the UK have identified that one of their biggest obstacles to progress in AI is access to exceptionally powerful and fast computational systems," said Per Nyberg, vice president of market development, artificial intelligence and cloud at Cray. "We're seeing a convergence between AI and supercomputing as organizations work toward taking AI projects out of beta and into production. The number of AI models that must be trained will only increase and organizations are coming to realize the performance and I/O challenges that will arise. Cray's innovative architectures and robust compute resources, as well as access to our Cray Accel AI Lab, can help address these challenges and give startups the fundamental tools they need to develop successful machine learning systems and initiatives."

Machine Intelligence Garage is a programme that helps businesses access the computation power they need to develop and build machine learning and artificial intelligence solutions. Machine Intelligence Garage is designed to help startups with a well defined business idea and technical capability for whom access to computation power is a barrier to growth. Successful applicants will get access to best-in-class cloud compute, hosted hardware or UK HPC from our partners and collaborators. We hold meetups, workshops and a wealth of other events to benefit the UK AI landscape.

Machine Intelligence Garage is a programme that helps businesses access the computation power and expertise they need to develop and build machine learning and artificial intelligence solutions. Machine Intelligence Garage is designed to help startups with a well defined business idea and technical capability for whom access to computation power is a barrier to growth. Successful applicants will get access to best-in-class cloud compute, hosted hardware or UK HPC from our partners and collaborators. Garages hold a special place in the history of tech. They are the beginning of great things; a place where game-changing innovations are born and incubated.