Imec and KU Leuven present energy-efficient AI chip for robots

Artificial intelligence is rapidly entering our daily lives, from smartphones that recognize the face of their owners to robot vacuum cleaners that can avoid socks lying around. To enable meaningful applications that truly improve our lives, these devices must be able to interact with their environment even faster and better. The processing of environmental images, sounds and other data is best done on the device itself for privacy reasons, but it also requires a lot of computing power which can quickly drain the battery. Today, some vehicles and smartphones are already equipped with a digital processor specifically designed to speed up calculations for such artificial intelligence. However, to enable high-performance augmented reality glasses, an autonomous drone or a smart robot, a new generation of AI chips is needed that knows how to perform these calculations in a much more energy-efficient way.

Two years ago, researchers at imec developed a new chip architecture in which calculations are performed directly in computer memory through analog technology. This analog accelerator makes it possible to perform most of the operations ten to one hundred times more energy-efficient than in a digital accelerator. For another part of the operations, the calculation precision and programmability of a digital accelerator are better suited. To combine the best of both worlds, researchers from imec and KU Leuven, with support from the Flemish government through the Flemish AI Research Program, developed a processor that combines the analog and a digital coprocessor. This led to DIANA, a new AI chip manufactured by chip manufacturer GlobalFoundries.