Qualcomm Acquires On-Device Machine Learning Pioneer Edge Impulse

A Californian company that was instrumental in multiple pioneering efforts to run machine learning on-device, particularly for voice recognition, Edge Impulse has agreed to be acquired by Qualcomm, which is aiming to boost its own development ecosystem for edge AI applications. Edge Impulse, founded in 2019 with the mission to streamline the creation of AI and machine learning models in embedded systems, says it will remain open to other platforms, while accelerating integration with Qualcomm devices and development kits.

Ceva and Edge Impulse announced a collaboration to rapidly develop, train and deploy advanced embedded machine learning (ML) applications on Ceva's neural processing units with cycle-accurate performance, even before physical hardware is available. This first-of-its-kind collaboration based around Ceva's NPU IP ensures that developers can accurately benchmark and refine the performance of their edge AI models using Edge Impulse's platform, significantly accelerating the time-to-market.

Syntiant is heading to CES 2023 with an exciting range of announcements and presentations of end-to-end edge AI solutions for always-on applications. The company will unveil a new reference design created in partnership with Telink that will enable ODMs and OEMs to easily and quickly deploy complete, ultra-low-power, deep learning voice processing applications in remote controls. Another major announcement is the launch of the Murata Type2DA neural decision processor module for edge AI audio and sensor applications.

Nordic Semiconductor has used the latest trade shows globally to showcase its latest low power wireless solutions, and introduced a series of new development solutions targeting Bluetooth LE Audio. At the Embedded World Exhibition that took place in Nuremberg, Germany, Nordic offered demonstrations of its new nRF5340 Audio Development Kit (DK), a design platform for rapid development of LE Audio products, and the Nordic Thingy:53 a rapid prototyping solution, both based on Nordic’s nRF5340 SoC.

Syntiant unveiled its TinyML Development Board, an easy-to-use developer kit aimed at both technical and non-technical users for building machine learning-powered applications in smart products, such as speech commands, wake word detection, acoustic event detection and other sensor use cases. The new machine learning development board allows developers to build low-power voice, audio and sensor applications using Edge Impulse’s Embedded ML platform.

Synaptics announced a partnership with Edge Impulse, the company leading machine learning development efforts on edge devices. The partnership combines Synaptics' latest Katana Ultra Low-Power Edge AI Platform with the Edge Impulse software development platform used by thousands of embedded developers to create, train and deploy custom models for a wide range of AI applications. The combined solutions will make developing machine learning models for low-power connected devices even easier.