Alif Enables Generative AI on a Microcontroller with Its Second-Generation Ensemble Chips

Alif Semiconductor, a specialist in 32-bit microcontrollers with artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI and ML) capabilities, has announced its second-generation Ensemble family of chips — the E4, E6 and E8, powerful enough to deliver on-device generative AI capabilities.

"Alif’s original Ensemble controllers, in full production today, remain at the forefront of the market for AI/ML performance, on-chip resources, energy efficiency, and small footprint," claims Alif president Reza Kazerounian of the parts. "We specifically chose Arm's standardized Ethos NPU IP [Intellectual Property] because of its widely supported broad ecosystem in addition to superior performance and efficiency. Alif's second-generation controllers will dial up benefits again enabling developers to create products that previously they could only wish for, unleashing endless new use cases that will enter our everyday lives."

The Ensemble E4, E6, and E8 microcontrollers are designed as more powerful successors to the first-generation E3, R5, and E7 respectively — replacing their predecessors' Ethos-U55 neural processing units with the newer and more powerful Ethos-U85 to boost performance without sucking up excess power.

"As edge AI deployments continue to grow at pace, we need to deliver smarter, faster, and more secure processing on the devices closest to the data source," claims Arm's Paul Williamson. "With the world's first implementation of the Ethos-U85 in an endpoint AI MCU [Microcontroller Unit], Alif is enabling on-device generative AI, which is particularly valuable in voice and vision applications. OEMs [Original Equipment Manufacturers] can now embed AI into battery-powered applications, illustrating why edge AI is being built on the energy-efficient Arm compute platform."

The new Ensemble chips deliver improved performance at a lower power draw than their predecessors, Alif claims, along with a wider internal memory bus, dual MIPI Camera Serial Interfaces (CSIs), a hardware image signal processor capable of operating at up to 200 frames per second, and two high-speed memory interfaces capable of 800MB/s throughput each. New options for static RAM (SRAM) data retention, meanwhile, deliver a reduced wake time from the chips' sleep modes.

The new Ensemble E4, E6, and E8, are sampling to "lead customers;" the company has not disclosed pricing or a timescale for general availability. More information on the Ensemble range is available on the Alif website, though at the time of writing the new parts had not yet been added.