AImotive launches 4th generation aiWare

AImotive, a leading supplier of scalable modular automated driving technologies, has announced the latest release of it aiWare NPU hardware IP.

aiWare4 features substantial upgrades to on-chip memory architecture, innovative new wavefront-processing algorithms and enhanced ISO26262-compliant safety features. In addition, many key metrics have been improved, including TOPS/mm2, effective TOPS/W and the range of high-efficiency CNN topologies.

Upgraded capabilities for aiWare4 include:

·Scalability: up to 64 TOPs per core (up from 32 TOPS for aiWare3) and up to 256 TOPS per multi-core cluster, with greater configurability of on-chip memory, hardware safety mechanisms and external/shared memory support

·Safety: Enhanced standard hardware features and related documentation ensuring straightforward ISO26262 ASIL B and higher compliance for both SEooC (Safety Element out of Context) and in-context safety element applications

·PPA: 8-10 Effective TOPS/W for typical CNNs (theoretical peak up to 30 TOPS/W) using a 5nm or smaller process node; up to 98% efficiency for a wider range of CNN topologies; more flexible power domains enabling dynamic power management able to respond to real-time context changes without needing to restart

·Processing: Innovative Wavefront RAM (WFRAM) which leverages aiWare’s latest wavefront-processing and interleaved multi-tasking scheduling algorithms, enabling more parallel execution, better multi-tasking capability and substantial reductions in memory bandwidth compared to aiWare3 for CNNs requiring access to significant external memory resources

These upgrades will enable aiWare4 to execute a wide range of CNN workloads using only on-chip SRAM for single-chip edge AI or more highly-optimised ASIC or SoC applications.

“aiWare4 builds on the extensive experience we gained from working with our silicon and automotive partners, as well as insights from our aiDrive team into the latest trends and techniques driving the latest thinking in CNNs for automotive applications,” explained Marton Feher, SVP hardware engineering for AImotive. “We now offer the industry’s most efficient NPU for automotive inference and have extended aiWare’s capabilities to achieve new levels of safety, flexibility, low-power operation and performance under the most demanding automotive operating environments.”