BrainChip Launches Akida 2.0 Neuromorphic Edge AI Accelerator IP in "Early Access"

BrainChip, which aims to accelerate artificial intelligence at the edge with neural network processors, has announced that its second-generation Akida platform is now available in early access — along with a second generation of its MetaTF software, supporting ONNX for broader compatibility.

"This is a significant step in BrainChip’s vision to bring unprecedented AI processing power to edge devices, untethered from the cloud," claims BrainChip chief executive officer Sean Hehir of his company's latest launch. "With Akida’s second generation in advanced engagements with target customers, and MetaTF enabling early evaluation for a broader market, we are excited to accelerate the market towards the promise of Edge AI."

BrainChip first demonstrated its original Akida neuromorphic processing technology at the Linley Fall Processor Conference in 2019, though it wasn't until 2021 that it launched development kits — built around compact Intel and Raspberry Pi computing systems — for the the general public to buy. In January 2022 the company announced full commercialization of the technology, followed by an ongoing partnership with Edge Impulse in 2022 to bring the technology into the mainstream.

Akida 2.0 was announced in March this year, promising support for Temporal Event-Based Neural Network (TENN) acceleration and optional vision transformer hardware, bringing more capabilities to the platform and relieving more workload from the host processor. At the time, the company announced three product classes: Akida-E, with a focus on energy efficiency; Akida-S, for integration into microcontroller units and systems-on-chips; and Akida-P, a high-performance range with the promise of optional vision transformer acceleration.

The company has now opened an "early access" program for access to the Akida 2.0 intellectual property (IP), promising that its TENNs support will allow for an "order of magnitude" improvement in compute density. "Multimodal Edge AI is an irreversible trend, and it is intensifying the demands on intelligent compute required from Edge devices," says Edge Impulse chief executive officer Zach Shelby in support of the company's announcement.

"We're excited that the 2nd Generation Akida addresses the critical elements of performance, efficiency, accuracy, and reliability needed to accelerate this transition. Most importantly, BrainChip has been a strategic partner that has collaborated closely with Edge Impulse to make their solutions easy to integrate, develop and deploy to the market."

BrainChip has asked that anyone interested in implementing the Akida 2.0 IP get in touch with its sales department for more information; pricing has not yet been publicly disclosed, and neither has the company announced a timescale for the launch of hardware development kits based on the second-generation platform.

More information is available on the BrainChip website.