MediaTek Pushes AI to the Edge

　　MediaTek demonstrated at the Consumer Electronics Show its readiness for the post-smartphone era by moving into several new sectors, including chips for data switches, automotive and AI processors for edge devices.

　　David Ku, MediaTek’s chief financial officer, discussed plans to bring “a certain AI function” that requires only small computational power to a large volume of devices including light switches. “We want to become an edge AI enabler,” he told EE Times in a one-on-one interview at CES.

　　Downplaying the company’s dependence on the smartphone market, Ku said smartphones — the single biggest driver for the company’s growth over the past several years — generated “less than 40 percent” of its revenue last year.

　　Roughly 30 percent of MediaTek’s sales last year derived from its Internet of Things (IoT) and ASIC/PMIC businesses. Ku described these two units as MediaTek’s “growth sector,” which grew 20 percent last year.

　　Another 30 percent of sales came from what Ku calls a “stable cash-cow business,” selling chips designed into digital TV, feature phones, monitors and optical storage.

　　Asked about the elements of MediaTek’s IoT business, Ku responded connectivity chips like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and semiconductors for a host of fast-growing voice assistant devices.

　　MediaTek also sees a growing demand for data switches. “We are making custom-designed ASICs for data switches for data centers,” Ku said.

　　While MediaTek will face potential competitors such as Broadcom and Cisco, Ku said the company is getting good traction from customers. “It’s a good market to be in because we aren’t seeing any slowdown among users generating lots of data," he said.

　　MediaTek is no longer solely dependent on the smartphone market, Ku stressed. The investment community sees “we have a balanced portfolio.”

　　Automotive market

　　MediaTek, although still new to the auto market, now has four products for automotive tier-one customers. They include telematic modules, mmWave radars, in-vehicle infotainment and digital clusters.

　　Among these, mmWave radars are particularly new. MediaTek has managed to crash a select group of chip vendors who have successfully developed CMOS-based radars. Others include: NXP, Texas Instruments and Infineon.

　　JC Hsu, MediaTek's corporate vice president responsible for its automotive business, told us, “Our mmWave radars, operating between 76-81GHz, can detect obstacles in 10 to 15 meters,” making them an ideal replacement for the ultrasound devices currently used to detect objects closer to a vehicle. “OEMs and tier ones are delighted that they no longer have to drill holes for ultrasound chips.”

　　As for automotive telematics, MediaTek is offering both DSRC and 4G cellular for Vehicle-to-vehicle, vehicle-to-infrastructure applications.

　　Ku acknowledged that voice assistants such as Amazon’s Echo and Google Home are “a hot idea.” While a mouse became the user interface of choice in the PC era, “touch” proliferated among smartphones as the preferred UI. Now fingers are giving way to vocal chords, he explained.

　　According to Ku, it’s a no-brainer for MediaTek to move into smart speakers like Echo or Google Home. “After all, those devices are a tablet without a screen,” he noted.

　　But MediaTek isn’t just satisfied with selling tablet chips for voice-assistant speakers like those made by Sony.

　　In contrast to Amazon’s push for cloud-to-cloud services in its Echo devices, MediaTek sees possibilities in a hybrid model of “edge and cloud.” The race already focuses on adding more “intelligence” locally, so that smart speakers can separate human voices from non-humans, cancel music in the background, and recognize vocal patterns.

　　Some of those building blocks for voice AIs are getting designed into smartphones, headphones and automotive platforms, he noted.

　　DSP combined with neural network

　　MediaTek, however, wants to push the idea of AI integration further onto devices as small as light switches.

　　Reportedly, the foremost consumer use of smart speakers is telling light switches to turn on and off. So, Ku asked, “Why not add that small AI capability to light switches?”

　　When connected lights were introduced, consumers were initially happy to do a little home demo, showing off how they can control the lights via smartphones. After a few days, though, Ku said, “What’s the fun in doing that? You might as well physically flip a switch.”

　　But if you can talk directly to a light switch, it’s a different story, he said. Without installing a voice assistant system in every room, “you can just say to the switch to turn itself off.”

　　Required for such a switch will be a small DSP and neural network that can recognize only 20 to 30 key words, he said. The DSP functions as a deep learning accelerator. The idea of a “decentralized processing unit” is important to MediaTek opening the door to sell chips into more than a billion devices.

　　Intelligo

　　Enabling AI on the edge is an AI processor and algorithms designed by a Taiwan startup called Intelligo. The company’s 30-member team spun off from MediaTek in 2016.

　　Intelligo designed an SoC called Debussy that functions as an intelligent DNN voice processor. The core of Debussy is Intelligo’s AI processor, iGo.

　　Obviously, installing AI in such a small device like a light switch comes with constraints that limit its scope, function, cost and power consumption. Ku acknowledged, “We are still in an early stage of AI. There’s still lots to learn.”

　　According to Intelligo, iGo offers “configurable deep neural networks and highly efficient inference engine (1 TOPS per second per watt).”

　　Intelligo also has a suite of iGo voice software. Included are: bi-directional voice quality enhancement, stationary and non-stationary noise cancellation, far-field processing, keyword spotting, voice verification and wake-on-voice.

　　The SoC provides a host of audio processing functions including acoustic echo cancellation, dynamic range control, equalization and sample rate conversion.

　　Asked about the team at Intelligo, Ku said, “We thought it was best to be spun out of MediaTek, because the startup environment would allow them to move much faster, thus accelerating their development.” MediaTek is an investor in Intelligo. Intelligo today already has customers other than MediaTek.