Ambarella Targets Low-Cost Edge AI Smart Camera Systems with New CV28M System-on-Chip
New part, sampling now, includes multi-sensor input, security features, bitrate optimizations, and targets compact and wireless cameras.
Computer vision acceleration specialist Ambarella has announced a new part targeting edge devices: the Ambarella CV28M camera system-on-chip (SoC), its latest entry in the CVflow computer vision processing family.
“All around us, devices are becoming smarter, and with our newest CV28M SoC, our customers can develop a new generation of intelligent sensing cameras for a variety of new applications,” claims Chris Day, vice president of marketing and business development at Ambarella. “In privacy-sensitive applications — such as monitoring retail stores, workplaces, rental properties, or the elderly at home — edge-based AI processing can support intelligent monitoring and fast decision-making without the requirement to record or stream video to the cloud.”
The CVflow-based chip offers 4k30 AVC and HEVC video encoding with multi-stream support, can accelerate convolutional neural network (CNN) workloads, and include a dual-core Arm Cortex-A53 CPU with NEON extensions and floating-point unit as well as Arm's TrustZone secure element. The chip also boasts a multi-channel image signal processor (ISP) with a 320MP/s input rate, multi-exposure high and wide dynamic range (HDR and WDR) processing, triple-sensor video input, and what the company calls "SmartAVC and SmartHEVC" to reduce the bitrate as much as possible in security applications.
The company is positioning the chip as ideal for edge processing, particularly for wire-free, battery-powered camera systems. The part features support for a range of sensors, like visible, structured light, and time-of-flight, and comes with a software toolkit that includes support for Caffe and TensorFlow frameworks.
"We're working on new markets, including IP security cameras, consumer home monitoring cameras, drones, automobiles, and autonomous vehicles," Day explains in an interview with VentureBeat, which alerted us to the launch. "This [SoC] is at the low end, and it enables us to do applications at different price points and features."
Amberalla has not yet confirmed pricing for the part, other than to say it sits at the lower end of the range, and is currently sampling the SoC with a date for mass production not yet confirmed. More on the company's CV range of parts can be found on the official website.