Aspinity enables ten times less power for always-on sensing

16/10/2019

Aspinity, a developer of analogue neuromorphic semiconductors, has announced its Reconfigurable Analog Modular Processor (RAMP) platform, an ultra-low power analogue processing platform that overcomes the power and data handling challenges in battery-operated always-on sensing devices for consumer, smart home, Internet of Things (IoT) and industrial markets, among others.

The RAMP platform incorporates machine learning into an analogue processor that is revolutionary in its ability to detect and classify various events, such as voice, an alarm or a change in vibrational frequency or magnitude, from background noise before the data is digitised. By directly analysing raw analogue sensor data in terms of what is important to the application, the RAMP platform more efficiently partitions the power and data resources of the always-on system to eliminate the higher processing power requirements and transmission of irrelevant data. Compared to an older ‘digitise-first’ architecture, where all sensor data must be continuously digitised for event analysis, the RAMP-based ‘analyse-first’ approach brings more intelligence to the sensor edge, reducing the power required by up to ten times and the volume of data handled by up to 100 times for always-on applications such as industrial vibration monitoring systems.

The demand for always-on sensing devices is surging, with billions of these intelligent systems coming into use within just a few years. According to Juniper Research, the installed base of digital voice assistants will triple to 8 billion by 2023. Always-on voice-first devices, such as smart speakers and wearables/hearables, are among the largest and fastest-growing market segments, with smart speakers reaching 482 million units by 2021 (according to IHS Markit) and wearables/hearables reaching 417 million hearables by 2022 (according to Juniper Research).

With device manufacturers heavily invested in the success of always-on portable sensing devices, technology developers are working to alleviate barriers to adoption. Chief among these is the short battery life that makes many always-on sensing devices unattractive to end-users.

“We are at the cusp of a mass proliferation of always-listening, continuously processing devices. To reach that next level, we need to resolve the architectural issues that are deal-breakers for some applications,” said Tom Doyle, Founder and CEO, Aspinity Inc. “Voice-first devices such as smart speakers and wearables/hearables, for example, ought to run for long periods of time without requiring battery recharge or they risk frustrating consumers. We are committed to fixing this problem through an intelligent architectural approach. Our RAMP platform analyses the incoming sound at the microphone edge to keep the wake-word engine and other digital processors in a low-power sleep state for the 80% of the time that no voice is present. Manufacturers who can offer a voice-first TV remote that runs for a year per battery change or a smart earbud that can run for an entire day without a recharge will gain a major competitive edge in the marketplace.”