BRN Discussion Ongoing

[JK200SX]

I had to read that a couple of times too. I believe they meant.......

BRN have released the design to Global Foundries and expect they will have the chips manufactured and returned to BRN in the 2nd quarter.

We expect our next
reference chips (plural) to be delivered in Q2 of this year.

Question: Do people read this as (many/plural) AKIDA1500 chips being delivered in Q2, or does the plural imply Akida1500, AKIDA500, AKIDA2000, etc?

 

[TECH]

Good evening, well it's still rather hot here in Perth 33c as I write this.

Today's release of the quarterly I found to be pleasantly surprising, the results reflected our company maintaining good control over the expenses, modest cash receipts which was to be expected.

It was good to see the CEO actually name the Akida chip, so now we all know that the reference chip is AKD 1500.

A USB version will be coming, as this has already been mentioned by a company employee in a recent video with one of the Universities we are engaged with, I did find that disclosure rather interesting given whom it was mentioned to.

Nice grants of nearly $700,000 USD to help out with the current R&D expenses, some of you may think too much is being spent in this department, but we must progress, that old saying rings true, "you only truly get what you pay for"...Peter, Anil and all our engineers could probably earn more elsewhere, but I have a feeling that their passion isn't always all about money, more of an addiction, and I say that in a respectful manner.

Finally, Seans comment I really enjoyed reading was the one I have been harping on about recently.

"In the coming quarter, the Company will focus on key sales targets and converting technical evaluations into paid licenses"

You will remember that the company made almost a U-Turn when approximately 3 months prior to our last AGM we gave up the business model of being a chip supplier to solely become a potential leading supplier of Edge AI IP, proven in silicon and truly unmatched to date by any other company, despite many articles that allegedly state otherwise.

The journey continues......keep watching this space.

Tech

 

[BaconLover]

Hi BL,
It's not "exactly", because I was not supporting an argument for more disclosure.
I was pointing out that Weebit are going the same FAB route as us with 22nm FD-SOI.
Nothing to do with the argument you and others have been flogging to death all day.
If you and others can't get you mind around the companies disclosure policy, you should sell
and buy into these other companies of which you are so enamored.
Actually , not just today, but what seems like forever.

Regards
WH

" I was pointing out that Weebit are going the same FAB route as us with 22nm FD-SOI."
I was saying the same thing too, no need to get worked up.

As to selling my shares, it's none of your business how I invest and trade. I own shares in this company, and I'll share my views here. It's not your private property to tell me what to do.

As to everything else,
Of course you're entitled to your opinion.
Have a great evening.

 

[Bravo]

Always loved the clean, crisp and visually standout nature of our new website as well as the kite which they use in marketing material such as the recently released White Paper.
The kite reminds me of a song (decades ago) which says it all about Brainchip:

"Let's go fly a kite
Up to the highest height
Let's go fly a kite
And send it soaring
Up through the atmosphere
Up where the air is clear
Oh, let's go fly a kite"

Nothing more to say

It reminds me of this gnarly toon! Try and stop yourself rocking out to this toe-tapping number, I dare you. Its so “lit” that it’ll keep you awake all night thinking you’ve developed restless leg syndrome.

 

[JK200SX]

Not Sure if this has been posted from 2021:

Akida spiking neural processor could head to FDSOI

Startup BrainChip Inc. has a road-map of larger and smaller SoC exemplars of its Akida spiking neural networking processing architecture and could go to fully-depleted silicon on insulator (FDSOI).

www.eenewseurope.com

BrainChip is starting to deliver its Akida1000 system chip to customers although the company insists that is main business model is intellectual property licensing, similar to ARM’sThe Akida1000 contains 80 neural processors and is implemented in 28nm CMOS (see Brainchip’s Akida is a fast learner) and Brainchip announced the start of volume production in April 2021. This was shortly after Louis DiNardo quietly left the position of CEO in March. Peter van der Made, the founder of Brainchip and previously CTO, has taken up the CEO role.


Anil Mankar, chief development officer, told eeNews Europe: “Chip production volume is just starting now. But you will see a lot of IP licensing going forward.” He added: “We are process agnostic.”

The near-term focus is supplying the Akida IP to 22nm although some customers may go back to 90nm process, Akida executives said.

Rob Telson, vice president of worldwide sales, said BrainChip is drawing up plans for smaller and larger versions of Akida under the names Akida500, Akida1500 and Akida2000. Some of these may well comply to a new generation of the Akida architecture – Akida 2.0 – due to arrive in 2022. It is thought Akida500 could be implemented in 22nm FDSOI manufacturing process, and serve as a demonstrator of the agnostic nature of the Akida architecture.


Mankar emphasizes that the Akida architecture can implement both conventional convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and spiking neural networks (SNNs) that allow for a broader range of data processing models and learnings. The human brain based on spiking signals passed between neurons. “Spikes are spatio-temporal. There’s a lot of information to extract from spikes that we are not yet taking advantage of,” said Mankar.

The scalability of the architecture is also important, he said. “Our IP can from 2 processing nodes to 128,” said Mankar. If a licensee goes to 7nm CMOS then they can go to many nodes, he added.

 

[FJ-215]

We expect our next
reference chips (plural) to be delivered in Q2 of this year.

Question: Do people read this as (many/plural) AKIDA1500 chips being delivered in Q2, or does the plural imply Akida1500, AKIDA500, AKIDA2000, etc?

I'm assuming one run of Akida 1500 as there is no mention of taping out other designs. Global Foundries could handle it, they have a multi project wafer program. The same as system TSMC used for Akida, only difference would be the whole wafer would be ours with the different variants.

Multi-Project Wafer Program

 

[Bravo]

I'm assuming one run of Akida 1500 as there is no mention of taping out other designs. Global Foundries could handle it, they have a multi project wafer program. The same as system TSMC used for Akida, only difference would be the whole wafer would be ours with the different variants.

Multi-Project Wafer Program

Whenever anyone talks about wafers I automatically think of waffles and then I have to go and raid the fridge. Does that happen to anyone else?

 

[SERA2g]

There hasn't been much talk about some of the finer points.
One I particularly like,
We expect our next
reference chips (plural) to be delivered in Q2 of this year.

I had assumed this to mean they will have AKD1500 reference chips in hand by Q2 end (30 June 2023) now that tape out has occurred.

I also assume this would be a small run of chips similar to AKD1000 which from memory was only a few thousand.

 

[Rise from the ashes]

Amazing stuff coming our way. I can't wait.

Davos 2023 - Are you Ready for Brain Transparency?

While the promise of neurotechnology to gain insight into the human brain is growing, this Davos 2023 session throws light on what brain transparency would mean.

www.weforum.org

 

[Proga]

This is supposed to be 1 of the 4 MB models chock full of Akida due for release in 2024 heavily based on the EQXX. Interestingly they're thinking of changing their model naming convention in 2024 as well by dropping EQ altogether. Hopefully MB will release more tech data on their 2024 MMA platform offerings as 2024 draws nearer to lift the SP out of its rut.

Mercedes EQA Rendering Previews Electric Sedan’s Aerodynamic Future

A new Mercedes-Benz EQA electric sedan rendering previews what the entry-level model could look like when it debuts next year.

www.motor1.com

 

[Techinvestor17]

Attention all whining and whinging, lazy people, who are still holding mommies hand.
If you haven't registered on the companies website for email updates, then you don't deserve to know what's going on.
Don't be so, FFFing pathetic.

To be fair the emails don’t work that well. I’m subscribed and never got anything about the tape out

 

[stuart888]

This from August 21
Looks like AKD500 will be next

What does the road ahead look like for Akida?
AKD1000 is only the beginning of what the company expects to be a robust product portfolio (Figure 33): – AKD500: BRN is in the planning stages for AKD500, which is a low-cost version of the AKD1000, for the consumer products market. – AKD1500: BRN is also in the process of developing and prototyping AKD1500, which will have additional features to execute Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) and Transformer networks. LSTM is a form of recurrent neural network which can learn order dependence in sequence prediction problems. It finds applications in machine translation and speech recognition. Transformer networks, on the other hand, find their applications in natural language processing (NLP) due to their ability to resolve the vanishing gradient problem – the time for which the memory is retained by the network, which is critical in order to process lengthy texts. – AKD2000: It is the optimised version of AKD1500 and the company has already started work on a prototype at its lab in Perth.



View attachment 28261

LSTM is a form of recurrent neural network which can learn order dependence in sequence prediction problems. It finds applications in machine translation and speech recognition.

We know that adding LSTM functionality is in the works. Very comforting, as the use-cases skyrockets when dealing with more complex Sequence Prediction Problems.

I would think that whatever comes next is also focused on helping Mercedes/Nasa/Renesas/Megachips too. Since LSTM works well with Speech Recognition, certainly Mercedes phase II might be part of their focus.

My humble thought, they would want to add benefits to as many current/future customers as possible. And projects that customers want to start sooner prioritized, rather than customers with later timeframes.

What is a Sequence Prediction problem?​

The sequence prediction problem consists of finding the next element of an ordered sequence by only looking at the sequence’s items.

This problem covers a lot of applications such as product recommendation, forecasting, web page prefetching, speech recognition, and machine translation.

LSTM networks are indeed an improvement over RNNs as they can achieve whatever RNNs might achieve with much better finesse. LSTMs do provide better results and are truly a big step in Deep Learning. With more such, you can expect to get more accurate predictions and have a better understanding of what choices to make.

Over the past year, the pace of improvements on all fronts is clear. From the website, benchmarks, partners, and IP expansion.
Very happy here, with all the progress team Brainchip is making!

 

[Deleted member 118]

I for one was extremely happy with yesterday share price, as I should have my bank account opened today to roll over my super to a self managed. Who would have imagined the SP being where it is today this time last year.

 

[stuart888]

What jumps out at me about the AKD1500 announcement is:

1 - Ultra low power, in the first sentence "extremely energy-efficient". So if AKD1000 was not as energy-efficient, and our team knew how to make it better, no brainer. Perhaps one of our potential customers had an agreed benchmark target, before launching into millions of products. Low power benchmarks would really help them sell it.

2 - Global Foundries, which is equally featured, low-leakage techniques, which is also energy-efficient focused as above. Same power focus.

Seems all about low power, which is a great way to differentiate the product, big time! Cannot wait to see the numbers when the benchmarks are released.
--------

The AKD1500 uses the latest features of BrainChip’s extremely energy-efficient, event-based, Akida AI IP in combination with the GlobalFoundries’ ultra-low leakage, proprietary FDX process technology platform, to deliver an ideal solution for always-on, at-sensor applications or other low-power embedded applications in AIoT, industrial, consumer and automotive markets.

In always-on, at-sensor use cases, Akida can completely offload feed-forward networks without the use of a CPU, which enables extremely energy efficient intelligent sensors. For other low-power embedded applications, the CPU solely performs sensor fusion processes or runs the application with Akida managing all the AI acceleration to significantly minimize CPU workload and system load, freeing up the MCU for other general-purpose computation.

The AKD1500 is designed as an accelerator reference chip, using quad/octal SPI interfaces for MCU modules and PCIe for extensible cards, which assists partners in developing and demonstrating their solutions as a stepping stone to integrating the Akida IP into their production SoCs.

“This is an important validation milestone in the continuing innovation of our event-based, neuromorphic Akida IP, even if it is fully digital and portable across foundries,” said Anil Mankar, Co-Founder & Chief Development Officer at BrainChip. “The AKD1500 reference chip using GlobalFoundries’ very low-leakage FD SOI platform, showcases the possibilities for intelligent sensors in edge AI.”

 

[Rise from the ashes]

I thought they were changing the name of the chip am I mistaken as usual?
Also no need to be alarmed anymore about that missing radioactive pellet.

Radioactive Capsule Located After Landcruiser Goes Back To The Future Trying To Block Overtaking Lane | The Bell Tower Times

Authorities believe they have located the infamously lost radioactive capsule after reports a Landcruiser numpty vanished into the future after hitting 142kph

www.thebelltowertimes.com

 

[DollazAndSense]

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Kirtland Air Force Base

• 
  
  

  AF Chief Scientist​

  Air Force Chief Scientist Dr. Victoria Coleman
  PHOTO DETAILS / DOWNLOAD HI-RES

Command Interview: AF Chief Scientist Dr. Victoria Coleman​

• Published Jan. 26, 2023
• By AIRMAN Staff
• Airman Magazine

Pentagon, Va. --

THE FOLLOWING IS THE EDITED TRANSCRIPT OF AN AIRMAN MAGAZINE INTERVIEW WITH CHIEF SCIENTIST OF THE UNITED STATES AIR FORCE DR. VICTORIA COLEMAN AT THE PENTAGON, ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA.​

​

PHOTO DETAILS / DOWNLOAD HI-RES
Coleman serves as the Chief Scientific Adviser to the Secretary of the Air Force, Air Force Chief of Staff, and Chief of Space Operations. She provides assessments on a wide range of scientific and technical issues affecting the department’s mission. In this role, she identifies and analyzes technical issues, bringing them to the attention of department leaders. She interacts with other principals, operational commanders, combatant commands, acquisition, and science and technology communities to address cross-organizational issues and provide solutions. Dr. Coleman also interacts with other services and the Office of the Secretary of Defense on issues affecting the Department of the Air Force’s technical enterprise. She serves on the Executive Committee of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board and is the Principal Science and Technology Representative of the Air Force to the civilian scientific and engineering community and to the public at large.

During the interview Dr. Coleman discusses the need to reestablish sustainable and trusted microelectronics development, manufacturing, testing and supply chain based in the U.S., the benefits of more focused and frequent testing of systems and the power of diversity in Science and Technology success.

Others are things, like neuromorphic architectures, where you move away from the traditional model of designing microprocessors. They are actually beginning to emulate how human neurons work. In some cases, the results that we get are phenomenal.
I'll give you a very concrete example. In the Air Force, we like to be able to match assets. Weapons that we have are matched with targets that we need to get after. So, you would want to make sure that you send the most appropriate weapon to the most appropriate target.
There are many, many combinations of doing this. For example, if I have 10 by 10, 10 assets and 10 targets, there are 25 billion combinations to finding the right match. A human being cannot do this. A computer maybe could do it. Classical computers can do 20 by 20, but they max out a 20 by 20.
A neuromorphic architecture can do 20 by 20 in about two milliseconds. So the capability that you get from the ability to build neuromorphic architectures completely changes the game.
Then there are also material advances. Using photonics, for example, for switching, you generate a lot less heat than if you switch voltages.
Quantum computing is another area where a lot of a lot of work has been done. We are seeing some applications already, like quantum navigation, for example, becoming really fundamental. Quantum navigation means that I can navigate without the benefit of GPS, which would be an incredible capability to have.
But you can go even further than that. One of the areas that I have been interested in for a very long time is what I call molecular computation, where you can actually take DNA structures and use DNA as a computational medium. DNA is a particularly good substance for computing.
Honestly, the only constraint that we have is putting enough money into the various research groups that can pursue these things.
Something that I care deeply about is our ability to prove out those innovations.
So we talked about CHIPS, but I want to put in a plug for one particular component of the CHIPS Act, actually the only component that we will be executing here in the DoD, which is the Micro Electronics Commons.
This is something that I've been working on for some time, certainly way before I went to DARPA. One of the things that has happened to us, in this desire to let the market forces rule, is that in order for us to prove out an innovation in microelectronics at the system level, we have to go overseas. We can't do it here at home.
So I talked just now about neuromorphic architectures. The NSF (National Science Foundation), through one of their expedition programs, has spent well over a $100 million on one specific project at Stanford University on neuromorphic architectures. Great work. Phenomenal. Smart, brilliant people.
In the university lab, maybe you can build three or 10, maybe 100 instances of a new device like that. In order for me to show the computational advantages that I just talked about, pairing targets to assets, I need to build millions. If I am going to go to a venture capitalist or an investor and say, “Please give me $20 billion to go and build a new fab to make this new thing,” why would they give me this money? I need to show to them that the computational benefits that I claim are achievable with this new structure have been proven.


Very interesting interview. I couldn’t copy and paste the whole thing in one post so here’s a snippet.

 

[TasTroy77]

HI Guys & Gals regarding my earlier post a 'good old fashioned' ASX announcement!!...

I have received this message from Tony and he has asked me to share this with you all and hopes it answers many questions and doubts we are having re ASX announcements.

Very much appreciated and many thanks to you Tony.

Hi BienSuerte

Happy new year to you.

I picked on your comment on TSE and I've been deluged by similar comments today from other shareholders, so please allow me to clarify and share my thoughts with you and others on TSE.

Firstly, to ensure you don't miss out on any news from BrainChip, I recommend you go to our website and subscribe to receive all updates so when we release press releases or ASX announcements you wont miss anything important, and you wont have to rely solely on the "1000 Eyes" .

Secondly, while the tapeout of Akida1500 reference chip represents an important progression in the development of our IP portfolio and demonstrates our ability to customise our neuromorphic chip architecture to meet specific end-user requirements, the news itself has no immediate revenue or financial implications, and is therefore neither material nor price sensitive. Todays share price reaction to this news would appear to bare that point out. The threshold for these matters is "materiality" and its not always as clear cut as it seems from the outside.

As we've discussed in person, and I've discussed at countless retail investor engagements and in thousands of emails, we are adhering to the ASX Continuous Disclosure Guidelines and the Listing Rules. The decision to make an ASX announcement or a media release is discussed by our Board of Directors and our Executive Leadership Team and guided by the advice of our Company Secretary. I certainly have input into those discussions, but ultimately its a decision made by the CEO. We don't make these decisions lightly and we certainly do consider the expectations of shareholders and the market in those debates, but ultimately we are guided by the law and especially by the ASX, especially in regard to "ramping announcements". To have made an ASX announcement about the tape out of Akida1500 would have been a ramping announcement, as defined by the ASX.

I know that everyone has their own opinions on these matters, but opinions aren't facts. The fact is we are disclosing everything we are required to disclose and we are applying a conservative interpretation of the ASX continuous disclosure obligations, because we have run afoul of these obligations in the past and under previous management we ended up on an ASX watch list for repeated ramping announcement violations. We are not doing that again and we have sought advice from the ASX Compliance Team to satisfy ourselves that we are operating in compliance with their rules. This is not only good corporate governance but also a way of minimising our risk of regulatory intervention.

I know its probably a vain hope on my part that this note will end this discussion for good, but I hope it at least proves that we do listen to our shareholders and we are aware of their views and expectations. Please feel free to share this note on the BRN Discussion thread and I look forward to catching up with you at our next TSE-BRN Investor function in Perth. My best wishes to you and your lovely wife.

Regards

Tony Dawe

Outstanding email from Tony Dawe and hopefully will get be taken on board by over zealous share holders.
Imo brainchip are making all the right moves and there is a lot of hard work happening behind the scenes.
All we have to do is exercise a little patience a day I truly believe that we will be rewarded in due course.

 

[misslou]

Hopefully the people whinging about the way Brainchip run their company find something else to do with their lives today.

 

[Foxdog]

Good evening, well it's still rather hot here in Perth 33c as I write this.

Today's release of the quarterly I found to be pleasantly surprising, the results reflected our company maintaining good control over the expenses, modest cash receipts which was to be expected.

It was good to see the CEO actually name the Akida chip, so now we all know that the reference chip is AKD 1500.

A USB version will be coming, as this has already been mentioned by a company employee in a recent video with one of the Universities we are engaged with, I did find that disclosure rather interesting given whom it was mentioned to.

Nice grants of nearly $700,000 USD to help out with the current R&D expenses, some of you may think too much is being spent in this department, but we must progress, that old saying rings true, "you only truly get what you pay for"...Peter, Anil and all our engineers could probably earn more elsewhere, but I have a feeling that their passion isn't always all about money, more of an addiction, and I say that in a respectful manner.

Finally, Seans comment I really enjoyed reading was the one I have been harping on about recently.

"In the coming quarter, the Company will focus on key sales targets and converting technical evaluations into paid licenses"

You will remember that the company made almost a U-Turn when approximately 3 months prior to our last AGM we gave up the business model of being a chip supplier to solely become a potential leading supplier of Edge AI IP, proven in silicon and truly unmatched to date by any other company, despite many articles that allegedly state otherwise.

The journey continues......keep watching this space.

Tech

Yes, but this is the exact same statement from the last 4C. I find it unusual that Sean has chosen not to rephrase this, or perhaps comment on progress here, i.e. have the sales team managed to convert any technical evaluations into paid licences over the last three months? The fact that he has used the exact same wording suggests that minimal, or no progress gas been made here. Or am I interpreting this incorrectly?

 

[alwaysgreen]

Yes, but this is the exact same statement from the last 4C. I find it unusual that Sean has chosen not to rephrase this, or perhaps comment on progress here, i.e. have the sales team managed to convert any technical evaluations into paid licences over the last three months? The fact that he has used the exact same wording suggests that minimal, or no progress gas been made here. Or am I interpreting this incorrectly?

Not exactly the same. I think he added a line about remaining positive because there was no sales activity last quarter. At some point, we need more licenses to be sold. Remaining upbeat is all well and good but businesses live and die by sales.

Last quarter:

This quarter:

ALso, this quarterly made no mention of "greatest sales activity and engagement" which could be construed as negative but also no mention of the "tough global tech market" which could be seen as a positive.