MegaChips, Japan-based ASIC and SoC services company, enters into strategic partnership with Quadric, a processor technology IP licensor, to deliver ASIC and SoC solutions built on Quadric’s edge AI processor architecture.
In January this year, MegaChips announced an equity stake in Quadric. It is also a major investor in a $21 million series B funding announced in March through its MegaChips LSI USA Corporation subsidiary. Quadric plans to use the new fund raised to release the next version of its processor architecture, improve the performance and breadth of the Quadric software development kit (SDK), and roll out IP products to be integrated in MegaChip’s ASICs and SoCs.
Quadric architecture is the industry’s first general-purpose neural processing unit (GPNPU). The company’s architecture delivers high ML inference performance and its solution also has general-purpose control and signal processing capabilities. Quadric GPNPUs can run both neural net graphs and C++ code for signal pre-processing and post-processing
While many other edge processing solutions combine high-power CPU clusters or exotic DSPs with application-specific network processing units (NPUs), Quadric’s GPNPU architecture provides the flexibility to accelerate the entire application pipeline without the need for a companion processor paired with the NPU.
“Our continued investment in edge AI leaders like Quadric reflects our commitment to supporting disruptive AI-based on-device computing solutions,” said Douglas Fairbairn, Director, Business Development at MegaChips. “Quadric’s stellar team, market traction with key customers and innovative edge AI solution contributed to our decision to invest in Quadric. We are proud to work with Quadric to bring its end-to-end IP products to our mutual customers in the form of customized silicon.”
MegaChips’ and Quadric’s collaboration addresses a growing industry trend in which cloud-based AI, ML and inference are migrating to the network edge. This migration requires powerful on-device AI processing capabilities to handle the massive amounts of data generated by billions of IoT devices and edge-based applications. Target applications for MegaChips’ ASICs and SoCs based on Quadric’s IP include autonomous driving (ADAS/LiDAR), industrial robotics, factory automation, automated guided vehicles (AGV) and advanced medical equipment.
“It’s an exciting time to partner with a semiconductor innovator like MegaChips to bring accelerated computing to edge devices,” said Veerbhan Kheterpal, co-founder and CEO of Quadric. “While the AI market is saturated with rigid accelerators that only address a portion of the machine learning compute challenge, our processing platform fills the void with a fully programmable, multi-kernel processing architecture. We’ve reimagined a general-purpose processor architecture and built it from scratch to give developers what they want: a versatile, high-performance processing platform that can support any type of AI and ML algorithm with an open ecosystem.”
As technology partners, MegaChips and Quadric are dedicated to bringing a broad range of solutions to customers building products that require edge AI capabilities. MegaChips has more than 30 years of experience delivering custom ASIC products and services to a wide range of customers worldwide. With strong internal design skills in AI, analog, image processing and other key technologies, MegaChips transforms design specifications into cost-effective, high-quality ASICs and SoCs. As a full-service semiconductor supplier with extensive engineering and manufacturing resources, MegaChips offers end-to-end foundry, packaging, testing and qualification capabilities to turn great design ideas into high-volume production silicon.
