Neural decision processor launches from Syntiant

Syntiant Corp has introduced the Syntiant NDP200 Neural Decision Processor (NDP), the company's first chip designed for vision processing that can provide highly accurate inference at under 1mW.

NDP200 neural decision processor from Syntiant

Packaged with the Syntiant Core 2, the NDP200 can run multiple applications simultaneously with minimal power consumption, including AI vision features such as person detection, object classification, motion tracking, and occupancy monitoring. With its multi-modal capabilities, the NDP200 also can perform highly accurate processing on-device, including multi-sensor fusion, voice command recognition, acoustic event detection, infrared detection, anomaly, and tamper detection, as well as other audio, motion, and pressure sensing applications.

"Our NDP200 brings extraordinary inference capabilities to a wide variety of always-on image and sensor applications. Our Core 2 architecture minimizes data movement by coupling memory and MAC functions that generally provide 100x improvement in efficiency and performance. As an example, an application that lasts three and a half days on a battery-powered device using an Arm A53 processor would last one year running on the NDP200," said Kurt Busch, CEO of Syntiant.

Ideal when presence and motion detection is required in ultra-low-power applications, the NDP200 brings always-on neural processing to all types of consumer and industrial battery-powered products, including IP and security cameras, mobile phones, tablets, smart speakers, smart displays, as well as smart home applications and security devices.

"The combination of Syntiant's NDP200 and PixArt's ultra-low-power image sensor offers the ability to develop the highly accurate person and object detection systems that consume very little power with almost no latency. These features are extremely critical to the growing need for imaging sensor applications found in battery-operated IoT devices, such as video doorbells and security cameras," said Sen Huang, CEO of PixArt Imaging.

Syntiant Core 2 is a highly flexible, ultra-low-power deep learning inference engine that moves larger neural networks into always-on domains, with the capacity to generate shared embeddings, run ensembles, and other neural architectures concurrently or in cascades. Designed to avoid inefficiencies in stored-program architectures, Core 2 provides neural designers with full control of multiple concurrent independent networks, while also enabling machine learning deployment without any intermediary compilers.

"We worked with Syntiant to deploy high performing, highly efficient machine learning image models running on the NDP200. We also were very impressed with the ease of use of the company's training development kit, which includes tools for running bit-exact simulations directly within high-level modeling languages. The NDP200 brings wide functionality, low power and high accuracy to any image or sensor edge AI application," said Mil Danailov, ML engineer at Connected.

The NDP200 is equipped with an Arm Cortex M0 processor and a HiFi-3 DSP to support feature extraction and signal processing for image and voice enhancements.   

Key product features include:  

• Syntiant Core 2 neural network  
• Hardware acceleration over 6.4GOP/s 
• Supports convolution neural networks, recurrent neural networks, fully connected networks, and with ability to process multiple heterogeneous networks concurrently 
• Supports more than 7 million parameters  
• Embedded user-programmable HiFi 3 DSP 
• Deeply embedded Arm Cortex-M0 Processor with dual-timers, and UART functionality 
• 11-wire direct image interface 
• SPI and I2C for multi-modal sensor fusion 
• Dual PDM microphone interface  
• I2S serial interface with PCM 
• Stand-alone operation  
• Onboard firmware decryption and authentication  
• Flexible clock generation 
• 40-pin QFN package (0.4mm pitch) 
• The Syntiant NDP200 is sampling now and is expected to start shipping in production volumes in Q4 2021
• Pricing for 10Ku quantities is $10 per unit