Axelera AI B.V. ("Axelera AI") has chosen SECO as the sole European developer of edge AI solutions based on its recently announced Metis™ AI Platform, a high-performance, cost effective and user-friendly platform combining hardware and software to accelerate computer vision at the edge.
SECO will gain early access to Axelera AI's technology and will complete the design of a development board and a dedicated module on a standard form factor. Introducing the module into SECO's product portfolio will provide high performance AI inference capability at low latency, enabling SECO to extend its offering to include the high-end computer vision market segment.
With a quad core architecture where each core can execute all layers of a standard neural network without external interactions, the Metis AI Processing Unit (AIPU) is one of the most powerful and advanced chips for edge devices, delivering up to 214 Tera Operations Per Second (TOPS) at a fraction of cost and power consumption of alternative solutions available in the market. If needed for applications that need to process a pipeline of neural networks, the cores combination allows each of them to operate independently on the same neural network, reducing latency, or to process several neural networks simultaneously. The two companies will work at delivering a set of value added, integrated solutions where Axelera AI's Processing Unit is complemented by SECO's edge computing and edge-to-cloud connectivity technologies, also leveraging on SECO's design and customization capabilities in several verticals whose business models can be transformed by computer vision.
In addition, CLEA, the IoT-AI platform developed by SECO, will serve as enabler for the deployment of existing AI-based models to perform accelerated inference functionalities directly at the edge, as well as transferring the AI-processed data on the cloud for their storage or further elaboration.
CLEA will also facilitate the launch of new, servitized business models, enriching the customer's applications with an additional set of scalable AI functionalities through a fast deployment of neural networks pipelines from a marketplace to the field. Such a flexible approach also allows adopters to define their optimal data analytics architecture, with the possibility to perform AI inference at the edge in those contexts where cost, privacy or latency may represent an issue.
In this way, the user experience can be enhanced as the AI-accelerated, on-field analysis of data and images from different sources empowers the devices' context awareness for an easier and augmented machine-to-machine and human-machine interaction.
"We are on a mission to democratize Edge AI, giving technology access to the mainstream B2B market. Enabling a strong ecosystem is crucial, offering our customers an easy way to buy, use, and integrate our disruptive technologies into their products. We are very proud of the collaboration with SECO, reinforcing our European DNA while adding critical skills and capabilities to serve a variety of customers in different vertical markets", said Fabrizio Del Maffeo, CEO of Axelera AI.
"Being at the forefront of innovation, supporting our customers in digitalizing their business models has always been at the core of our strategy. Accelerated edge AI is a disruptive technology that will open great opportunities in several verticals. With Axelera AI, we want to become the European reference player in the Edge AI computer vision market, leveraging our design and customization capabilities to deliver high-performance, user-friendly solutions that cut our customers' time-to-market, reduce their technological complexity and allow them to focus on their business goals", said Massimo Mauri, CEO of SECO.