Embedded World: AI vision processing for 12 cameras

Author: EIS Release Date: Mar 23, 2023

In a second announcement in one day at Embedded World In Nuremberg, TI revealed Arm Cortex-A72-based microcontrollers for AI and vision processing with up to 12 cameras, for building, industrial and retail automation.

 

TI AM6xA AI vision processors

AM62A3 and AM62A7 (and their ..-Q1 automotive cousins) support one to two cameras (up to 5Mpixel, streaming up to 4K30frame/s) at less than 2W for doorbell cameras and smart retail. AM62A3 scores 1Top/s for AI processing.

AM68A has up to 8Top/s and can handle eight cameras (up to 12Mpixel, up to 4K60frame/s) for machine vision

AM69A achieves 32Top/s for up to 12 cameras (up to 12Mpixel, up to 2x 4K60frame/s)for edge AI, autonomous mobile robots and traffic monitoring

The high-end AM69A (diagram) gets its processing power from two quad-core Arm Cortex-A72 clusters (eight cores total), plus two pairs of Cortex-R5F cores for timing critical processing then, to provide the 32Top/s of AI processing, four C7x DSPs partnering four of the company’s ‘MMA’ deep learning accelerators.

 

Artem Aginskiy general manager Arm-based processors, Texas InstrumentsTI general manager of Arm processors Artem Aginskiy announces AM6xA processors

 

“The C7x/MMA cores are available only for deep-learning function in the AM69A class of processors. The DSP next generation C7x core combines TI’s DSP and EVE cores into a single higher performance core and adds floating-point vector calculation capabilities, enabling backward compatibility for legacy code,” according to the company, which added: “Integrated security features protect data against modern day attacks. CSI2.0 ports enable multi sensor inputs.”

 

A public beta of an open-source AI model development and testing tool, Edge AI Studio, is scheduled to appear in Q2 2023.

 

Starter kits are available for AM62A, AM68A, and AM69A.