Intellino: Processor for embedded artificial intelligence

Abstract

The development of computation technology and artificial intelligence (AI) field brings about AI to be applied to various system. In addition, the research on hardware-based AI processors leads to the minimization of AI devices. By adapting the AI device to the edge of internet of things (IoT), the system can perform AI operation promptly on the edge and reduce the workload of the system core. As the edge is influenced by the characteristics of the embedded system, implementing hardware which operates with low power in restricted resources on a processor is necessary. In this paper, we propose the intellino, a processor for embedded artificial intelligence. Intellino ensures low power operation based on optimized AI algorithms and reduces the workload of the system core through the hardware implementation of a neural network. In addition, intellino’s dedicated protocol helps the embedded system to enhance the performance. We measure intellino performance, achieving over 95% accuracy, and verify our proposal with an field programmable gate array (FPGA) prototyping.