Anker has made its own chip to bring AI to all of its products

Anker announced its own custom silicon that the company says will bring native AI to audio devices, mobile accessories, and Internet of Things devices. The processor is thus the world’s first neural network In-memory calculation The AI ​​voice chip, which is smaller than traditional chips, requires less power to run complex calculations. This makes it an attractive solution for small appliances.

When comparing SO to current chips, Anker CEO Steven Yang said, “Every AI chip created so far stores the model on one side and does the computation on the other. To reason, the device has to hold all these parameters, multiple times per second, for each inference. And so it places the computation where the model actually lives. The model never has to move again.”

The first thus chip will be integrated into Soundcore’s upcoming flagship earbuds. The company says it started with earbuds because they are the most difficult devices to place AI chips in due to size limitations. The small footprint limits the amount of power available, and because the chip is always active while the earbuds are being worn, previous designs had to rely on small neural networks capable of handling a few hundred thousand parameters. But Anker says that with a more power-efficient in-memory computing design, the chip is thus able to handle several million parameters, dramatically increasing computing power to deal with things like complex global noise.

Traditional call noise cancellation relies on those little onboard neural networks and can have a hard time isolating your voice in very noisy environments, resulting in ambient noise leaking in or compressing sounds too much, making them difficult to hear. Anker says the largest neural network available on a chip thus, plus eight MEMS (micro-electromechanical systems) microphones and two bone conduction sensors to focus on your voice, in the yet-to-be-announced earbuds will have clearer call audio, no matter the environment.

It may sound interesting, but we’ll have to see how the in-memory computing chip performs in the real world against the competition – including… Apple AirPods Pro 3 and Sony WF-1000XM6. based on Leaked in MarchThe first earbuds to include a chip will likely be the Liberty 5 Pro Max and Liberty 5 Pro, which are expected to be priced at $229.99 and $169.99, respectively. Anker will release full product details for the earbuds, as well as additional AI-powered features, at Anker Day on May 21.