Microchip acquires Neuronix AI Labs, terms not disclosed

Microchip has acquired Neuronix AI Labs to expand its capabilities for power-efficient, AI-enabled edge solutions deployed on field programmable gate arrays. Neuronix AI Labs provides neural network sparsity optimization technology that enables a reduction in power, size and calculations for tasks such as image classification, object detection and semantic segmentation, while maintaining high accuracy. Microchip’s mid-range PolarFire FPGAs and SoCs already lead the industry in terms of low power consumption, reliability and security capabilities. The acquisition of this technology will enable Microchip to develop cost-effective, large-scale edge deployments of components designed for use in computer-vision applications on systems that have cost, size and power constraints and enable a multifold increase in AI/ML processing horsepower on low and mid-range FPGAs. The acquisition of this technology will allow non-FPGA designers to harness powerful parallel processing capabilities using industry-standard AI frameworks without requiring in-depth knowledge of FPGA design flow. The combination of Neuronix AI intellectual property and Microchip’s existing compilers and software design kits allows for AI/ML algorithms to be implemented on customizable FPGA logic without a need for resistor-transition level expertise or intimate knowledge of the underlying FPGA fabric. It is also designed to allow for updating and upgrading CNNs on the fly without needing to reprogram hardware.