Quadric grabs $21 million to develop the next-generation Quadric architecture for edge AI applications
Quadric, a startup building chips for edge AI, has secured $21 million in Series B funding round led by mobility supplier Denso’s NSITEXE subsidiary, with significant investment coming from MegaChips, with the participation from existing investors Leawood VC, Pear VC, Uncork Capital, and Cota Capital. Quadric said the funding will be used to drive further innovation in its next-generation processor architecture to improve the Quadric SDK performance and increase the IP products for integration in SoCs.
According to the company, the first generation Quadric architecture is built to meet the requirements of edge AI applications that require offline computation at low power consumption. The architecture is designed to run applications that demand advanced neural networks, digital signal processing capabilities, and improved computer vision performance.
“It’s an exciting time to be able to partner with industry powerhouses in semiconductors and AI to bring accelerated computing to the Edge,” said Veerbhan Kheterpal, Co-founder and CEO of Quadric. “The market is saturated with rigid accelerators. Our product fills the void with a fully programmable multi-kernel processing architecture.”
The architecture is powered by Vortex cores that are highly scalable and powerful enough to handle any edge AI workload. The company’s Q16 chip has 256 Vortex cores, with the design focused on keeping data on the chip (using large amounts of integrated memory and providing large bandwidth between cores). The hardware design works in concert with a software development kit to allow for the programmability of a wider range of AI models — all without needing a traditional CPU.
With the funding, Quadric plans to take a step ahead to develop next-generation Quadric architecture that will improve “topline” performance, consume less power and maintain the M.2 form factor for the developer to design and deploy at a faster pace. The company claims the second-generation silicon product will be available at the end of 2022 for developer use. The money raised will also go towards expanding the team and hiring more engineers in the key product areas.
“Our continued investment into an edge AI leader like Quadric reflects our commitment to supporting disruptive AI-based on-device edge computing solutions,” said Douglas Fairbairn, Director of Business Development at MegaChips.
Article Topics
AI models | chip | Denso | edge AI | Quadric | venture capital
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