The Korea Herald

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KAIST develops power saving AI chips

By Korea Herald

Published : June 13, 2017 - 15:32

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Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology has developed the world’s lowest-power-consuming artificial intelligence chips for facial recognition, the institute announced Tuesday.

The “K-Eye” series has a wearable type that looks like a necklace and a dongle type that can be connected to a smartphone like a portable USB drive. The wearable K-Eye chip can also be connected to handsets via Bluetooth. 
(Yonhap) (Yonhap)

The chip requires around 1 milliwatt of electricity to fully operate and recognize the user’s face at up to 97 percent accuracy. The amount of power required is about 0.0002 percent of the power consumed by the central processing unit of Google’s AlphaGo.

The core technologies embedded in the K-Eye series are the institute’s Always-On image sensor and facial recognizing processor chip CNNP. The sensor itself can recognize users’ faces, reducing power waste. The CNNP operates on its own based on a deep-learning algorithm.

The chips are expected to help operate a mushrooming number of new AI software programs on mobile devices, which usually require huge power for implementation, the institute said. 

By Song Su-hyun (song@heraldcorp.com)