Making Coffee with the MAX78000 and Some AI (Part 1)
04/22/2021
Getting Started
Modern hardware can accelerate the use of convolutional neural networks (CNN), a kind of deep neural network, that are mostly used to analyze visual imagery or audio. For an application, this opens up a new way to process data and interact with its environment.
The required data processing for a CNN is a lot for a single CPU and something that can be heavily paralyzing; therefore, an accelerator is included. For your PC, this can be done with the help of your graphics card or special accelerator units like the NVIDIA Tesla cards (or these accelerators are built into the system itself, as seen on the new Apple M1 processor). The Maxim Integrated MAX78000 MCU brings a CNN accelerator, a Cortex-M4F and a RISC-V core together, as you can read from the datasheet. Aimed at CNN processing while operating in low-power modes, this allows for new ways to integrate AI in embedded designs.