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MistyWest Introduces a Low-Power SOM Focused on AI Vision

Based on Renesas' RZ/V2L AI-accelerated microprocessor.

James Lewis
3 years agoMachine Learning & AI

When an IoT device needs AI-based vision, the trade-off between processing capability and power consumption can be tricky — especially for battery-based designs. Also, where there is high power consumption, there is heat which might mean bulky heat sinking. Fortunately, Canada-based engineering design group MistyWest partnered with Renesas to address these challenges. The result is a battery-powered system-on-a-module for AI vision applications called MistySOM.

In its 40 by 50 millimeter form factor, MistySOM includes:

  • A Renesas RZ/V2L microprocessor
  • 2 GB of DDR4 RAM
  • 32 GB of eMMC storage
  • An extensive array of communication interfaces

The 123 configurable GPIOs support UART, I2C, Octal SPI Flash, USB 2.0, CAN FD, SDXC, MIPI CSI/DSI, Gigabit ethernet, a 12-bit ADC, and SSI audio — just to name a few. Check this MistySOM product brief for a complete list of available peripherals.

The Renesas RZ/V2L is a dual-core Arm Cortex-A55 CPU running at 1.2 GHz. The RZ/V2L also features Dynamically Reconfigurable Processor (DRP) Technology. The DRP-AI accelerator allows a vision algorithm to change configurations on-the-fly.

For example, you can break down a complex algorithm into smaller contexts. Then those can be multiplexed in the data path as needed. The configuration change can happen as fast as one millisecond. Two real-world applications for DRP-AI are 2D barcode scanning and iris detection.

This integrated combination allows MistySOM to provide a real-time AI inference engine with hardware-accelerated image processing functions, like noise reduction.

MistyWest plans to sell the module through a GroupGets campaign. After the SOM launches, a carrier board will be available in the future. Visit the MistySOM campaign page to sign-up for notifications when the campaign goes live.

For those attending embedded Vision Summit 2022 in Santa Clara, you can meet with MistyWest at the Renesas booth.

James Lewis
Electronics enthusiast, Bald Engineer, and freelance content creator. AddOhms on YouTube. KN6FGY.
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