Key Takeaways
- Scalable, cost-effective AI processing now possible for up to 12 cameras in smart retail, building automation, and industrial applications
- Texas Instruments introduces a new family of six Arm Cortex-based vision processors with enhanced energy efficiency
- Open-source evaluation and model development tools with a free web-based tool, Edge AI Studio, available in Q2 2023 for accelerated time to market
Introducing the New Vision Processor Family
In a groundbreaking announcement, Texas Instruments (TI) introduced a family of six Arm Cortex-based vision processors that will transform edge AI applications in building, industrial, and retail automation. This new family enables designers to incorporate more vision and artificial intelligence (AI) processing capabilities at a lower cost and with better energy efficiency. Applications range from video doorbells to machine vision and autonomous mobile robots.
TI’s vision processor family, which includes the AM62A, AM68A, and AM69A processors, is supported by open-source evaluation tools and model development tools. These tools allow designers to develop and scale edge AI designs across multiple systems, accelerating time to market for their applications.
Scalable AI Camera Performance at the Edge with Vision Processors
TI’s new vision processors bring the intelligence of the cloud to the real world, eliminating cost and design complexity barriers when implementing vision processing and deep learning capabilities in low-power edge AI applications.
These processors feature a system-on-a-chip (SoC) architecture that includes extensive integration. Integrated components consist of Arm Cortex-A53 or Cortex-A72 central processing units, a third-generation TI image signal processor, internal memory, interfaces, and hardware accelerators that deliver from 1 to 32 teraoperations per second (TOPS) of AI processing for deep learning algorithms.
Some of the processors in this family include:
- AM62A3, AM62A3-Q1, AM62A7, and AM62A7-Q1, which support one to two cameras at less than 2 W in applications such as video doorbells and smart retail systems. The family includes the AM62A3, the industry’s lowest-cost 1-TOPS vision processor.
- AM68A, enabling one to eight cameras in applications like machine vision, with up to 8 TOPS of AI processing for advanced video analytics.
- AM69A, achieving 32 TOPS of AI processing for one to 12 cameras in high-performance applications such as edge AI boxes, autonomous mobile robots, and traffic monitoring systems.
Streamlined AI Evaluation and Development with Open-Source, Free Tool
Starting in Q2 2023, designers can accelerate time to market for their edge AI applications with a public beta of TI’s free open-source tool, Edge AI Studio. This feature-rich, web-based tool allows users to develop and test AI models quickly and easily using user-created models and TI’s optimized models, which can also be retrained with custom data.
Availability, Pricing, and Package
AM68A processors are available now through TI and authorized distributors in production quantities. Pre-production samples of the AM62A and the AM69A are also available through TI. Pricing for AM6xA processors starts at US$12 for 1,000-unit quantities. Starter kits are available on TI.com for the AM62A (US$249), AM68A (US$249), and AM69A (US$299).
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