Chip companies partner with Foxconn for edge AI in video applications
A trio of edge computer vendors including Foxconn Technology Group have partnered to create a new product for efficient AI processing for video analysis in edge deployments.
AI chipmaker Hailo Technologies Ltd. and Socionext Inc., which makes systems-on-a-chip hardware for use in video and imaging products, are incorporating their technology into Foxconn’s BOXiedge server platform.
The incorporation of AI-specific functions on a specialized processor provides significant energy efficiency for standalone artificial intelligence inference nodes. A media release from Socionext indicates that the Boxiedge is primarily aimed at smart city, medical, retail and industrial Internet of Things applications.
The BOXiedge is a high-density and fanless edge device from Taiwan industrial giant Foxconn. Socionext, based in Japan, provides SoC (system-on-chip) technology and brings its parallel multi-core processor SynQuacer SC2A11 to the partnership. Israel-based Hailo contributed its Hailo-8 deep learning processor, which boasts the ability to process up to 26 tera operations per second (TOPS).
Buyers can shunt at least 20 camera streams through the video management system (VMS_ server for processing and analysis on the edge, according to Socionext. Capabilities also include pose estimation and image classification.
Foxconn itself has used AI solutions developed in-house that use video feeds to detect product defects on different production lines, leading to an improvement in reporting accuracy from 95% to 99% and a reduction of at least one-third of the operating costs for appearance defect inspection projects. Customers of the newly combined solution now have a way to implement these kinds of projects without having to do AI model development and training themselves.
The partnership comes as a flood of products and investment comes for AI-focused chip designs. Hailo recently closed $60m in funding to compete in the edge AI hardware market, a landscape already dotted with aggressive and well-funded chip startups including Graphcore, Xnor, AIStorm, Esperanto Technologies, Quadric and Flex Logic.
Established companies like Sony aren’t being left out. Sony recently announced a chip design that combines AI processing capabilities directly onto the video sensor, for example.
Article Topics
chip | edge AI | Foxconn | Hailo Technologies | Socionext | Sony | video surveillance
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