Hi allI've been doing some latenight reading on all things akida...

Hi all

I've been doing some latenight reading on all things akida and have stumbled upon some news that I was unaware of and am fairly sure has not been posted on HC before.

Before Mercedes' eventual incorporation of akida into its EQXX voice control system, Mercedes collaborated with Intel to test its neuromorphic processor and its suitability for simple voice commands in vehicles...... Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Mike Davies!

See the following article by Accenture Labs titled "Driving intelligence at the edge with Neuromorphic Computing".

On page 6 there is a case study titled "Responsive voice control for smart vehicles".

In a recent collaboration with an automotive client, we demonstrated that spiking
neural networks running on a neuromorphic processor can recognize
simple voice commands up to 0.2 seconds faster than a commonly used
embedded GPU accelerator, while using up to a thousand times less
power. This brings truly intelligent, low latency interactions into play, at
the edge, even within the power-limited constraints of a parked vehicle.

The above paragraph left me wondering whether Mercedes was the automotive client in question. I thought the chances were high given that Mercedes is, that I'm aware of, the only automotive business using spiking neural networks within its voice control system.

See page 16 for the Accenture team responsible for the document. Their LinkedIn's can be found here: Alex Kass (Director at Accenture Labs) and Timothy Shea (Research Lead at Intel (previously at Accenture Labs)).

I then did a @ManChild001 style deep dive on their respective LinkedIn pages and found an interesting post on Tim's LinkedIn. The article linked to his post is titled "Smarter Cars: Auto Makers Experiment With Chips That Think Like Humans".

For context, the article is dated December 10th 2020 and in my view, achieves three things:

1. It confirms, irrefutably, that Mercedes was testing Intel neuromorphic processors as recently as December 2020
2. Peter's Van Der Made's consistent "we have a three-year lead on our competitors" is well founded, at least when it comes to Intel.
3. The article shows how truly well timed and positioned akida is in being the first and only SNN neuromorphic processor available to the market

Support for 1 - It's there in plain english.
Support for 2 - Within the article, and from the horses mouth: "Intel’s neuromorphic chips could begin selling commercially within five years, according to Mike Davies, director of Intel’s Neuromorphic Computing Lab." Five years from December 2020 puts Intel's Loihi commercialisation out to December 2025. Akida was commercially available around December 2021 and so we have a 4 year lead or thereabouts.
Support for 3 - A direct quote from the article: "The chips are expected to be the predominant computing architecture for new, advanced forms of AI deployments by 2025, according to Gartner. By that year, Gartner predicts the technology will displace graphics-processing units." Intel bloody well better hurry up or they won't have a neuromorphic processor on the market when their GPU's are displaced.

Now for some extra fun - if you revert back to the post on Tim's LinkedIn and read the comments, you will find a comment by Alex Kass. Alex refers to the collaboration with the automotive client and provides a link to an "Intel Labs Day 2020: Accenture Session" video that demonstrates Intel's Kapoho Bay / Loihi chip recognising voice commands in a proof of concept system (2:50 - 6:18) such as turning lights on and off, opening doors and starting the engine.

As history shows, Mercedes went with akida in the end.

Why wait until 2025 for a SNN neuromorphic processor when you can have it now?

IMO DYOR