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New Chips Could Bring Deep Learning Algorithms To Your Smartphone

Posted by samzenpus on from the smarter-smart-phone dept.

catchblue22 writes: At the Embedded Vision Summit, a company called Synopsys, showed off a new image-processor core tailored for deep learning. It is expected to be added to chips that power smartphones, cameras, and cars. Synopsys showed a demo in which the new design recognized speed-limit signs in footage from a car. The company also presented results from using the chip to run a deep-learning network trained to recognize faces. A spokesperson said that it didn't hit the accuracy levels of the best research results, which have been achieved on powerful computers, but it came pretty close. "For applications like video surveillance it performs very well," he said. Being able to use deep learning on mobile chips will be vital to helping robots navigate and interact with the world, he said, and to efforts to develop autonomous cars.

21 of 40 comments (clear)

  1. You know how it all starts by Tablizer · · Score: 2

    You: "Siri, dial my girlfriend"

    A.I.: "Sorry, I cannot do that, Dave."

    You: "I'll let you open the pod bay doors; I know you like doing that."

    A.I.: "Deal!"

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
    1. Re: You know how it all starts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I used to have a girlfriend. I'll never forget that day.

    2. Re:You know how it all starts by cold+fjord · · Score: 1

      We seem to be safe for now, the vendor of the IP is only including visual recognition, not audio.

      --
      much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
    3. Re:You know how it all starts by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      Hey, it's sci fi, anything can happen

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
  2. We've seen this one before... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    <austrian>My CPU is a neural net processor; a learning computer.</austrian>

    Better toss it in the molten steel.

    1. Re:We've seen this one before... by fisted · · Score: 1

      It was lead, you pleb

      --
      CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
    2. Re: We've seen this one before... by fisted · · Score: 1

      Oh shit, you're right. Thanks for helping me get my...oh whatever, go eat a dick, AC.

      --
      CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
  3. Why do I need this... by angularbanjo · · Score: 1

    ... when I have Google, Facebook, the NSA, GCHQ, etc. doing the heavy lifting for me already? What's more, they can link their algorithms together to develop even greater insight than some quad or octo core chip in my hand ever could.

    1. Re:Why do I need this... by Tatarize · · Score: 1

      Easy. Computer power on handheld devices is less than massive companies which are efficient and processing all the data from many devices allows them to use only the resources needed whereas the power within the phone is always there and not always fully utilized. It also takes power to run that stuff. And really while neural net chip things aren't horrible they can easily just be simulated in software or processed by GPUs. The idea of having special hardware in a phone to perform a somewhat rare specialized function is both wasteful and unneeded. The data capabilities are such that every input to my phone could be sent to HQ. We're talking a latency of less than a tenth of a second.

      It's rather pointless. We have the ability already in every phone to process this stuff on the fly. We can run a neural net without special hardware. You can code them in software rather easily. You can code them to run in parallel on a GPU if you want. If we're adding hardware as such, how about you just add some more cameras and microphones, or more GPU power, or more space for battery.

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      It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
  4. Lots of this already exists by mspohr · · Score: 5, Interesting

    My car now has Nvidia chips that recognize speed limit signs and displays them inside the speedometer (along with a reminder when I exceed the speed limit). For the future, Nvidia has announced the NVIDIA’s DRIVE PX self-driving car computer which has a lot of advanced image processing.
    http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2...

    The 2015 GPU Tech Conference was stuffed full of this tech.
    http://www.gputechconf.com/

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    I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
    1. Re:Lots of this already exists by cold+fjord · · Score: 1

      The vendor of this IP claims their IP is far more power efficient. That could be important for many applications, or scalability.
      Delivers 1000 GOPS/W with 5x better power efficiency than GPUs

      --
      much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
  5. What did they show off? by tomhath · · Score: 2

    I can see the utility of better pattern recognition. But the article doesn't provide any real insight into what the chipset provides. Did they implement a standard algorithm in hardware so it's faster and cheaper? Or did they actually advance the state of the art in pattern recognition with something we didn't have before?

    1. Re:What did they show off? by cold+fjord · · Score: 1

      They're offering high perfomance, low power, low cost IP cores that can be combined with other IP. This will make it easier and cheaper to integrate that functionality into other devices.

      News release: Synopsys Launches High-Performance Embedded Vision Processor IP

      Description page w/ link to datasheet: High-Performance Vision Processors Optimized for Object Detection
      Interesting nugget: Delivers 1000 GOPS/W with 5x better power efficiency than GPUs

      --
      much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
  6. Re:Applicant Clearing House by Wycliffe · · Score: 2

    A pretty good idea. Too bad you posted on the wrong article.

  7. VVS Fix? by cdxta · · Score: 1

    Can it prevent vertical video recording yet?

  8. Re:AKA Convolutional Neural Network by ClickOnThis · · Score: 1

    For those who wonder what exactly is meant by "deep learning," it's an algorithm officially known as a convolutional neural net or CNN.

    Cool.

    Is that related to a Factured-Opinion eXogenerator?

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    If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
  9. "a company called Synopsys" ?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    That's like saying - "In a Big Data conference, a company called Google has shown their search engine".

    Synopsys is the Microsoft/Google/Apple of the Chip Design software world.

    That's not "a company called Synopsys".

  10. Deep learning? by ArcadeMan · · Score: 1

    Do you want Deep Thought? Because that's how you get Deep Thought.

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  11. Why? by koan · · Score: 1

    Why would you want this on your phone (tracking device)?

    --
    "If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
    1. Re:Why? by coofercat · · Score: 1

      ...so it can do more of the recognition tasks it already does (like voice search, face recognition in photos, and others) in the phone without having to send them off to "the cloud" for processing. "Lighter" tasks such as predictive text and so on can be done faster (and consume less power), and so have more room to be better, if done in dedicated hardware.

      So in terms of tracking, this could/should lead to less, not more tracking.

    2. Re:Why? by koan · · Score: 1

      Why?

      --
      "If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."