ARM launches Two new AI processors for IoT on-chip Intelligence

ARM today announced the launch of two AI processors, Arm Cortex-M55 processor, and Arm Ethos-U55 NPU.

These two processors are the industry’s first microNPU (Neural Processing Unit) for Cortex-M and deliver a 480x leap in ML performance to microcontrollers.

Additionally ARM also announced a new Machine Learning IP that along with unified toolchain offer on-device ML processing for billions of small, power-constrained IoT and embedded devices.

Executive Opinion

Senior Vice President and General Manager, Automotive and IoT Line of Business, Arm, Dipti Vachani, "Enabling AI everywhere requires device makers and developers to deliver machine learning locally on billions, and ultimately trillions of devices. With these additions to our AI platform, no device is left behind as on-device ML on the tiniest devices will be the new normal, unleashing the potential of AI securely across a vast range of life-changing applications."

Product Manager, TensorFlow Lite for Microcontrollers, Google, Ian Nappier, quoted, "Google and Arm have been collaborating to fully optimize TensorFlow on Arm’s architecture, enabling machine learning on embedded devices for very power-constrained and cost-sensitive applications, often deployed without network connectivity. This new IP from Arm furthers our shared vision of billions of TensorFlow-enabled devices using ML at the endpoint. These devices can run neural network models on batteries for years, and deliver low-latency inference directly on the device."

IoT and AI play

Due to 5G rollouts across the world, IoT devices demand more on-device intelligence. Also, such on-chip intelligence reduces cloud environment dependency of IoT devices. At the same time, such innovation brings down the cost and reduces the devices' size as well, notes the announcement.

The AI-capable Cortex-M55 processor can be paired with Arm’s microNPU processor, Ethos-U55 to cater to demanding ML systems, notes the announcement.

Cortex-M55 and Ethos-U55 both are supporting Arm’s Cortex-M software toolchain. These two processors also work with Arm TrustZone for complete system-on-chip enhanced security.