Synopsys’ ARC® NPX6 NPU IP is the 2023 Edge AI and Vision Product of the Year Award Winner in the Edge AI Processors category. The ARC NPX6 NPU IP is an AI inference engine optimized for the latest neural network models – including newly emerging transformers – which can scale from 8 to 3,500 TOPS to meet the demands of AI applications requiring real-time compute with ultra-low power consumption for consumer and safety-critical automotive applications.
Key innovations of the NPX6 NPU IP start with a highly optimized 4K MAC building block with enhanced utilization, new sparsity features and hardware support for transformer networks. The (optional) integrated floating-point data types (FP16/BF16) are embedded in the existing 8-bit data paths to minimize area increase and maximize software flexibility. Scaling is accomplished with an innovative interconnect supporting scales of up to 24 4K MAC cores for 96K MAC (440 TOPS with sparsity) single-engine performance. Up to eight engines can be combined to achieve up to 3,500 TOPS performance on a single SoC. The NPX6 also expands on the ISO 26262 functional safety features of its predecessor, the EV7x vision processor. Both the NPU IP and the new ARC MetaWare MX Development Toolkit integrate connectivity features that enable implementation of multiple NPU instances to achieve up to 3,500 TOPS performance on a single SoC.
“We are honored to be recognized by the Edge AI and Vision Alliance with the ‘Best Edge AI Processor of 2023’ award. The Synopsys ARC® NPX6 NPU IP delivers unmatched power-performance efficiency and support for the latest neural network models, such as transformers, to meet the data-intensive demands of AI-enabled systems requiring real-time compute.”
John Koeter, Sr. Vice President of Product Management and Strategy for IP, Synopsys
Synopsys is the Silicon to Software partner for innovative companies developing the electronic products and software applications we rely on every day. As an S&P 500 company, Synopsys has a long history of being a global leader in electronic design automation (EDA) and semiconductor IP and offers the industry’s broadest portfolio of application security testing tools and services.
This award was presented at the 2023 Edge AI and Vision Product of the Year Awards Ceremony; the program is organized by the Edge AI and Vision Alliance. The Edge AI and Vision Product of the Year Awards celebrate the innovation and achievement of the industry’s leading companies that are enabling and developing products incorporating edge AI and computer vision technologies.
