Leveraging RISC-V for Expedited Product Development

We’re continuing that momentum at this year’s RISC-V Summit North America 2023 from November 7th-8th at the Santa Clara Convention Center. Industry leaders and change makers will flood this conference with exciting new applications of RISC-V.

You will be able to not only hear from Axelera AI’s executive team and top engineers, Axelera AI will also provide demonstrations of our groundbreaking Metis™ AI platform and discuss applications for the system, ranging from security to machine vision and robotics.

CPU SoC Engineer at Axelera AI, Florian Zaruba, will be speaking at the summit, presenting a session titled, “Accelerating Edge AI with the Help of RISC-V.” Florian will discuss how to leverage the growing RISC-V software ecosystem for expedited product development, as well as the challenges and opportunities we faced as a company while integrating various RISC-V cores into our products. Florian will provide an outlook for how Axelera AI plans to expand our RISC-V efforts in upcoming products – a can’t miss event.

Collaborative open-source technologies like RISC-V (Reduced Instruction Set Computers) have shaped the acceleration of computer vision on Edge AI devices. An open-source Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) that was developed at the University of California, Berkeley, RISC-V can be used for many applications, from smartphone chips to advanced AI processors.

Some people have even compared RISC-V to the Internet, with similarities including that both are freely available and draw on contributions from around the world to innovate at a reduced cost and improved speed.

Since RISC-V is available under an open-source license, unlike most ISAs, it has become a pillar of chip development. The flexibility provided from being open standard has allowed architects and designers flexibility to experiment with chip designs within RISC-V and benefit, or falter, for mutual benefit.

The ability to innovate with RISC-V comes without the risk of architectural lock-in, which means you are free to switch IP vendors and you can provide your own extensions on top of the main RISC-V standards.

The flexible licensing characteristic of RISC-V means that there are no legal constraints to prevent the implementation or sale of processor hardware, offering limitless opportunities for innovation and commercialization.

Application areas for RISC-V include AI, augmented reality, automotive, cloud servers, computer devices and controllers, machine learning, network edge and IoT. While the ISA shows promise in smartcards and IoT devices, user-centric applications – think your smartphone or computer – will require continued improvement.

RISC-V’s proven open-source architecture allows smaller developers to build hardware when they otherwise would not have the funding or infrastructure. RISC-V may soon be the base for every core, GPU, GPGPU, AI processor, and every other type of processor yet to be conceived.

Evangelos Eleftheriou, Axelera AI’s Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, notes, “While many businesses are eager to adopt these technologies, they often face limitations such as inadequate data processing capabilities, lengthy onboarding processes, high energy demands, and steep adoption costs.

Axelera AI is dedicated to providing an AI platform tailored to the industry’s needs that simplifies the adoption and integration process. By utilizing RISC-V, we are able to achieve this”

Axelera AI’s game-changing Metis™ AI platform is built with the proprietary Metis™ AI processing unit (AIPU), digital in-memory computing and RISC-V controlled dataflow technology, delivering world’s most powerful AI accelerator for the Edge. The transformative AIPU both contributes to and benefits from the significant investments in developing the RISC-V ecosystem,

The Metis™ AI Platform offers practical Edge AI inference solutions, catering to companies developing next-generation computer vision applications, placing the power of AI within reach for businesses that previously may not have had the means to leverage AI technologies.

The technology trajectory that Axelera AI adopted with the help of RISC-V underscores the company’s focus on rapidly providing access to advanced Edge AI-native hardware and software solutions for companies of all sizes across a range of market verticals, from industrial manufacturing to smart retail solutions.

Want to find out more? Come and meet us at the RISC-V summit, Santa Clara, USA, 2023

Axelera AI is providing the world’s most powerful and advanced solutions for AI at the edge. Its game-changing Metis™ AI platform – a holistic hardware and software solution for AI interference at the edge – enables computer vision applications to become more accessible, powerful and user friendly than ever before. Headquartered in the AI Innovation Center of the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, Axelera AI has R&D offices in Belgium, Switzerland, Italy and the UK, with more than 130 employees in 15 countries. Its team of experts in AI software and hardware hail from top AI firms and Fortune 500 companies.