Startup Axelera AI, which is based in the AI Innovation Center of High Tech Campus Eindhoven, announced it has successfully tested and validated its first chip, the Thetis Core. Delivering 40 tera operations per second, the chip is fully optimized for AI edge applications. The Thetis Core, first taped out in December 2021 with the support of imec.IC-link, is a test vehicle demonstrating the high performance and efficiency of the in-memory computing technology developed by Axelera AI.
The in-memory computing engine delivers an astonishing 39.3 tera operations per second (TOP/s) with an efficiency of 14.1 TOPs/W at an INT8 precision in less than 9 square millimeters. In the case of high-sparsity activations, the peak energy efficiency reaches 33 TOPs/W. Moreover, by increasing the nominal clock frequency the peak throughput reaches 48.16 TOPs.Multiple enhanced versions of the in-memory computing engine will be integrated inside the company’s first product, which will be announced later this year and will be available in early 2023.
“Thetis Core is an important milestone for Axelera AI. It demonstrates that our in-memory computing technology can deliver extremely high throughput, high precision, and efficiency in an extremely compact footprint” - Axelera AI CEO and co-founder Fabrizio del Maffeo
Axelera AI is a European company which is developing a powerful, efficient, and competitive hardware and software platform to accelerate artificial intelligence workloads at the edge. The company’s groundbreaking solutions will empower thousands of applications of AI at the edge, making the use of AI more efficient and accessible than ever before. Axelera AI’s products will be fully integrated with the leading open-sourced AI frameworks when it is launched to select customers and partners in early 2023.
